The plan had been to tear down Fort Nashborough, the replica fort that's the wrong size and in the wrong location, last year and then this year build a new replica fort, also the wrong size and in the wrong location, this year. If you've passed by the fort recently, obviously, it's still there. And now reconstruction of the fort is being tied into the flood project.
“We’re going to do the demo, but as far as rebuilding it, we’re going to wrap it into the (flood) project, so that it all kind of gets opened at the same time,” [Metro Parks and Recreation Director Tommy] Lynch said, adding that it would have made no sense to rebuild the fort only to have blasting from the flood mitigation project damage it. “It will delay the opening at least a year,” he said, to either 2016 or perhaps 2017.Construction on the downtown flood mitigation system, pending Metro Council approval, would begin by the end of the summer and take 30-36 months.
The Fort Nashborough historical site is a riverfront representation of a fort built by some of Nashville’s settlers that has been a destination for generations of Middle Tennessee students. The first representation of Fort Nashborough was built in 1930, followed by the current facility in the early 1960s.
The current site, which has shown some dilapidation, mimics the original Fort Nashborough, built in the 1780s just north of where the existing, smaller structure sits. Its construction came after James Robertson founded Nashville in 1780 and was used by early settlers to defend themselves from Native Americans until battles ceased in 1792.
This gives us some time to discuss as a city something rather important. See, historians are beginning to think that there never was a "Fort Nashborough."
Bill Carey, in an article for The Tennessee Magazineexplains:
In the 1840s, a researcher named Lyman Draper came to Middle Tennessee and interviewed everyone he could find who had lived at or near the fort in the early days. According to Clements, not a single one of them ever referred to the place as Fort Nashborough. “They called the place either ‘the fort’ or ‘the bluff’ or ‘French Lick Station’ or ‘Bluff Station,’” says Clements, who spent several years researching Draper’s interviews. “Not one time did I find anyone who actually referred to it as ‘Fort Nashborough.’”
Do we want to rebuild a "replica" that is too small, in the wrong space, and under a false name? Might we be better off to ask historians and archaeologists to give us a true picture of the size and location of the fort and we could then mark the boundaries in some interesting way or commission an artist to make some kind of piece that might give visitors a sense of the size and scale of the fort in its proper spot? Some kind of light sculpture that would make the fort appear in its rightful place at night? Or some kind of decorative outline of the fort inset into the streets and sidewalks?
I'm just not sure that rebuilding something we know isn't right is really a great idea. If the replica doesn't actually replicate, what is someone learning by viewing it?
