CAMDEN, Tenn. – For thousands of years, pearls have been a prized gemstone used to craft jewelry and other adornments. Pearls are primarily cultivated in China. North America has just one freshwater pearl farm that cultivates the shiny objects. It’s the Tennessee River Freshwater Pearl Farm and it’s at Kentucky Lake in western Tennessee.

Along the mossy rocks in Camden, one will spot a small flatbed boat anchored in shallow water. That boat is used to harvest beautiful pearls from the Tennessee River from mussels in the bay of Birdsong Resort, Marina and Campground.

Tennessee’s freshwater pearl and mussel shell industry began with the outbreak of a “pearl rush” on the Clinch River in eastern Tennessee just before the turn of the 20th century. The period from 1895 to 1936 was the start of Tennessee’s prominence as one of the nation’s leading states in pearl marketing and production.

The profitable business lasted from the 1940s to the 2000s. During its heyday, from the 1960s to the 1990s, Tennessee’s commercial mussel shell business employed about 2,000 people and provided nearly $50 million in state revenue. By 2020, though, the pearl industry waned drastically.

According to Bob Keast, owner of the farm and resort since the early 1960s, mussel fishing as an industry was booming in Kentucky Lake as shells of the mollusks were fished for and used to create garment buttons.

This type of fishing is known as brailing. A boat drags hooks along the waterbed and the mussels grab onto them as they pass. Fishermen were after the shells themselves as pearls had not come into play at this time.

In the late 1970s, the Keast family was approached by John Latendresse, who married a Japanese woman, Chessy, right after World War II and brought her to Camden. The couple had a unique aspiration to produce pearls from the freshwater mollusks that are abundant in many bodies throughout North America, so they purchased the farm in 1979.

Despite the presence of this large mussel industry, culturing pearls with the native mussels was never done, as both the meat and pearl were often seen as just a natural byproduct and discarded. That is, until the Latendresses discovered that the water located in the bay of Birdsong Creek met all the requirements to start a pearl farm. Chessy used the culturing techniques she learned in Japan and applied those in the waters around Camden.

Keast said these exact methods are still in use today, and they closely resemble those used in larger saltwater operations.

Pearls naturally form as a byproduct of oysters and mussels after an irritant material, such as a small minnow, parasite, or even a piece of sand, gets trapped inside the shell. When this happens, the mollusks begin to produce a substance called nacre that encapsulates the irritant, protecting the inside shell from possible damage while also creating a beautiful shiny object.

“We implant a piece of foreign material into the mollusk and that mimics the material needed to begin the pear creation process,” Keast said. “We then we put it in a net, and we hang the net off our PVC water pipes here at Birdsong. And then we wait six or eight years, and it grows a pearl.”

John Nerren, known as “Diver John,” has worked at the Tennessee River Freshwater Pearl Farm since the early 1980s. Nerren oversees this stage of the process. At one point he was just one of about 80 divers who collected mussels for the farm.

“Diving for mussels in Kentucky Lake comes with many challenges, such as low visibility due to lake conditions and the water depth,” Nerren said.

Because he’s been a part of this operation since its beginnings, Nerren has seen it evolve over the years. He remembers a time when the farm started to utilize multiple nearby laboratories to create the optimal conditions for pearl growth.

“We had out microscopes and we had our pH testing kids,” he said. “We could control the flow of the water in the laboratory with pumps and all kinds of special devices. It was state-of-the-art back in the day.”

Today, Nerren said there is no longer use for these specialty built laboratories as the farm slowly started to scale back operations about 20 years ago.

After John Latendresse died in 1979, Keast bought the farm in hopes of preserving the location’s unique history. They still cultivate pearls, just at a lower rate than in previous years when the farm focused on exports. The process is now used to show visitors of the Tennessee River Freshwater Pearl Farm Museum (located on the resort grounds) how the gems are made.

The museum has an assortment of items related to the site’s history and mussel farming.

Susan Lewis, who has been in charge of the museum since its opening, can be found doing a variety of tasks on a typical day, from explaining the history of mussel farming in the region to grading imported and locally grown pears to be used for crafting jewelry.

The bay where the pearls are grown may seem small, but Lewis said its rich history draws in visitors.

“They’re in here shopping and trying to learn about the freshwater mussel and the pearl farm, and it’s a lot of information, but I think the people are hungry for that,” Lewis said.