Few people either in or out of the state believed Butler's law would ever be enforced.

But the American Civil Liberties Union was quick to react to a statute it believed to be unconstitutional. They considered the Butler Act a perfect chance to strike out against the literal teachings of Christian Fundamentalists, and offered to defend any teacher who challenges the law.

John Scopes, left, John Neal, middle, and George Rappleyea proceeding to a court hearing.

They soon found a willing participant. George Rappleyea, a staunch evolutionist and local businessman in Rhea County, Tennessee, saw an article about the ACLU's offer. Rappleyea, a transplanted New Yorker, hatched a plan. Any court battle over the anti-evolution law would attract national attention, he reasoned, and with that attention would come investors and money to help restore the failing economy of his adopted hometown of Dayton.

He met with other Dayton community leaders at Fred Robinson's drugstore on Main Street. They hammered out the details of the plan they hoped would put Dayton on the map.

Rappleyea contacted the ACLU, which agreed to put up the money for a defense. Only one detail remained: finding the teacher. Enter John Scopes.

Scopes, then 24, was actually the football coach at Dayton's local high school, but filled in teaching biology. He used "A Civic Biology," by George William Hunter, as his textbook -- a pro-evolutionary work, certainly, but a work more advanced than Darwinian theory.

Dragging Scopes in from a tennis game, they sat him down in the drugstore and laid out their plan. He agreed. The town constable arrested him, and Scopes went back to playing tennis.

The battle between Darwin's scientific theories and biblical dogma had been raging for half a century by the time Rappleyea decided to turn Dayton into a flash point. It was an interesting place for the debate: a small Southern hamlet with some 1,800 people, most of them farmers and most of them conservative Christians.

Many residents of Tennessee were embarassed by the entire proceeding, eager to shed the stereotype of the ignorant Southerner that plagued them.

An article by famous writer H.L. Mencken, who was sent to cover the trial by the Baltimore Sun.

Newspapers throughout the state and the country were quick to attack the small town, saying the whole thing was just a publicity stunt. Not that it stopped reporters from coming to Dayton in droves, including H.L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun. Mencken wrote irreverently about the trial, and the Sun offered to pay Scopes' fine if he were to be found guilty.

Magnifying the spectacle were the players who came to lead either side of the case. William Jennings Bryan, by then a legend in American politics for 30 years, was perhaps the most fervent voice in the nation against Darwin's theories. He saw "ape-ism," as he termed evolutionary theory, as an unparalleled threat to the sanctity of the human condition.

Serving as Bryan's foil was Clarence Darrow, the most famous trial attorney in America and possibly the most notable American lawyer of the 20th century. A self-described agnostic, Darrow was widely believed to be an atheist.

Eastern Tennessee was as hot as ever in the summer of 1925. Some 600 people were there when the second-floor courtroom in the Rhea County courthouse was called to order on July 10, 1925.

Judge John T. Raulston, a lay Methodist minister, was confronted with a bizarre scene in his courtroom: packs of reporters, radio microphones from WGN in Chicago set up to broadcast the trial live, telegraph lines and film cameras.

The scene outside was even more unique. A six-block area around the courthouse dubbed "Monkeyville" had been roped off. Preachers proselytized in the street, carnival games abounded, and even live monkeys contributed to the outdoor festival that Dayton had become -- a festival largely of the town's own making.

Rhea County Court House.

Darrow asked that the jury -- drawn from an all-white, all-male pool -- be selected from a hat, rather than having the local sheriff choose the panel. Raulston agreed, and invited his own daughter to pick the first name. All the jurors but one were church members, and most were poorly-educated farmers. Mencken wrote to his Baltimore audience that it would be "spitting in the eye of reason" to call the process impartial.

By the following Tuesday, Darrow was beginning to reveal his true colors. He asked Raulston to stop the practice of beginning each day's testimony with a prayer, insisting it would be prejudicial to Scopes.

"I do object to the turning of this courtroom into a meeting house," Darrow said.

Raulston turned Darrow down. Later that day, Raulston threatened reporters after New York papers reported that he would deny a motion to quash Scopes' indictment. A committee of reporters investigated the leak, while he delayed his ruling -- before finally denying the motion. The prosecution finally began its case.

The prosecutors' case was remarkably brief, and the defense's turn quickly arrived. But much of defense case, built around expert testimony on science and evolutionary theory, was heard without the jury present so the judge could rule on the relevance of expert testimony.

By that Thursday, the Tennessee heat was almost unbearable as both sides wrangled over the admissibility of the defense's expert testimony.

It would "be to substitute trial by experts for trial by jury," Bryan's son, William Jr., told the court. Bryan -- and the creationists -- won out as Raulston refused to let the defense present its testimony. Darrow protested and was cited for contempt.

Assuming the case was essentially over, Mencken and many others covering the trial left Dayton. Little did they know what would come next.

The following Monday, the crowd came early, expecting to hear closing statements. But they were overwhelmed by the summer heat once again, and a rumor that the courtroom's floor might buckle sent the proceedings outside onto the courthouse lawn.

With a stand erected on the side of the courthouse and a massive crowd gathered around, Darrow presented his ace: he called Bryan as a defense witness. Some three thousand people, almost twice the population of Dayton, closed in to hear the great orator and creationist defend his heartfelt beliefs.

[ more about Darrow, Bryan and Bryan's testimony ]

The skirmish between Darrow and Bryan lasted for two hours before Raulston halted it. The jury, excused so that the judge could consider if Bryan's testimony was germane to the case, never heard a word.

Darrow never made a closing argument, and when Scopes was found guilty, the judge fined him the bare minimum of $100 -- technically in violation of state law requiring the jury to decide the amount. It was that technicality which the Tennessee Supreme Court ultimately used to overturn the conviction.

The Butler Act remained on the books for another 40 years, until the legislature repealed it in 1967.

John Scopes left the now-infamous town of Dayton and eventually became a petroleum engineer. He died in 1970. George Rappleyea also left to seek out more fruitful opportunities. He died in 1967.

Dayton itself returned to normal within a week, devoid of the riches the town fathers thought they could attract. But its legacy included the scar of having been the sleepy Southern crossroads where the battle over evolution was fought.
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