Map: Tennessee State Library and ArchivesLast week, I saw that the Tennessee State Library and Archives (unofficial motto: “We’ve seen a lot of weird stuff in this building.”) had posted an old map showing where the “new” Whites Creek Turnpike went. C.W. Nance, who was the superintendent of the project, drew the map in 1845.
There’s so much good stuff on this map, so let’s get situated. There are a few things from the old map still in existence now. The Gallatin Turnpike Road is now Gallatin Pike. The Nashville bridge is mostly gone, but thanks to the work of the Native History Association, which discovered the remains of the bridge, we know exactly where it was, practically where the Victory Memorial Bridge is now. Whites Creek Pike ran north on what is now 1st Street. The Dickinson Meeting House Road, which the Whites Creek Pike overlapped is the now-shortened and typo-adopted Dickerson Pike. Whites Creek Pike still does have a spur coming off Dickerson Pike and you can see how, before the interstate went through, it would have joined up with what is now Baptist World Center Drive.
Interestingly, Whites Creek Pike came nearer the river right by Lock One Park (probably coming up Lock Road), which means it ran to Eaton’s (sometimes written Heaton’s) Station which was where Lock One Park is now. Then as now, it heads off northwest toward the town of Whites Creek.
The old Whites Creek road, the predecessor to the Pike, Â ran right along the river through the bottom. You can see why it was worthwhile to Nance to build the turnpike. The old road must have been often wet and sometimes flooded. He put the turnpike on high ground. It would have stayed open most of the time.
The Trail of Tears
We know that the people on the Trail of Tears crossed the old Nashville toll bridge and headed toward what is now Whites Creek on their way up to Clarksville. Not on the turnpike, since it didn’t yet exist, so they must have gone on that old riverside road.
On Saturday, I went out to look at the area to see how much of that old road was left. I used two criteria to determine “left.” One — was it still a road? Two — if not, were there buildings on it? And guess what? It’s there for the most part.
I know. I’ll give you a second to let it sink in — we have an important cultural landmark going unrecognized and unprotected and we somehow have not fucked it up beyond salvage. The stretch of Main Street that Native Americans would have walked once they got off the bridge is still there, right under Victory Memorial Bridge. Farther north, Cowan Street takes a turn and briefly runs right along the river on the old Whites Creek Road path. And though there are brickworks and parking lots and petroleum outposts, only a couple of things sit right up against the river.
Now, obviously, we’re probably not going to get Marathon to give up their stretch of river front (though in terms of preservation, they just seem to be driving on the area that would have been the old road, so it’s not a total disaster). And other businesses between Marathon and Jefferson Street need to be able to load and unload barges.
But everything north of Jefferson Street in the bottom is coming down for the proposed The Landing at River North. We need to have a bigger discussion about this development (and we will here in a second), but the developers are promising green space and it’s hard to imagine that the Army Corps of Engineers is going to let them build in the old road route since it’s right at the river bank.
So, isn’t this a unique chance to intentionally preserve--and then maintain--a part of the Trail of Tears?
Prehistoric East Nashville
So, I’m going to eat crow a little bit here. Recently, I broke with my personal philosophy that we should put nothing but parks in floodplains, because I was seduced by the beautiful views of downtown and the river from the location of the proposed The Landing at River North, which would go in the industrial area along Cowan Street, the area right between the old Whites Creek road and Whites Creek Pike. I fucked up. Not only because it is utterly stupid to let people develop in areas we know flood, but that’s a big reason. And when the developers insisted that they were going to put everything above flood level, I should have laughed, because did you see the picture that ran with that post?! They’d have to change a bottom to a bluff and I’d hate to be anyone in the new lowlands that creates.
But also because I didn’t bother to look to see what was there beneath the warehouses and, well, wow. It’s a huge village. Early archaeologists describe four large mounds surrounded by massive cemeteries with the whole site stretching from the river to James McGavock’s house (908 Meridian Street). As far as I can tell, with the exception of some work done when the Jefferson Street bridge was replaced, no modern archeologist has been in that village. But at least one of the mounds was still visible (probably the largest one) into the late 1970s.
But let’s go back a century before that. Back in 1876, Joseph Jones, in Explorations of the Aboriginal Remains of Tennessee starts his discussion of Nashville, with this delightfully bone-chilling sentence: “A considerable portion of the city of Nashville has been built over an extensive Indian graveyard which lay along the valley of Lick Branch.” Good luck sleeping ever again those of you who live along Lick Branch. Oh, we buried Lick Branch, so you can’t know if you’re sleeping in the start of Pet Sematary? Sucks for you.
But on to Jones’s description of the land there that we’re about to build a new neighborhood on.
An extensive burying-ground lies on the opposite bank of the Cumberland, directly across from the mouth of Lick Branch, surrounding a chain of four mounds. One of these mounds appeared to have been the burying place of a royal family. Two of the smaller ones are thought to have been the general burying-ground of the tribe, whilst the largest one may possibly have been erected as a site for the residence of the chief, or for a temple. In the low alluvial plane, all around these stone graves, are scattered fragments of pottery, arrow-heads, and other stone implements. The caving of the bluff constantly exposes stone graves, skeletons, and relics of various kinds.
Earlier than that, in 1845, when the Whites Creek Pike opened, Professor Gerald Troost, the state geologist from 1831 to 1850 wrote about this same site, which he lived near:
We have one [a burial site] near the suburbs of our town, which extends from near the Cumberland river almost to Mr. Macgavoc’s [sic]; it is about a mile in length, how much in breadth I cannot say, the road and houses cover one side and a cultivated field the other; in this field was a tumulus which is now worn down. From the part that I have examined of this grave-yard, I found that the stone coffins were close to one another, situated in such manner that each corpse was separated only by a single stone from the other.
Let’s just take a minute to appreciate what Troost and Jones are saying. On the east bank of the river, from roughly Jefferson street north a mile and extending clear over to Meridian Street was a cemetery so full that people were buried sharing coffin walls. Imagine the size of the village that would have led to a cemetery that large.
And what do we know about that village? The people who lived there? Dear reader, you’ve now read two-thirds of the available information. Presumably during the Jefferson Street Bridge excavations archaeologists were able to learn a little more about these early East Nashvillians. But we’re still wondering about so many things. Where did they get their mustaches waxed? Did they insist on vintage hand-crafted stone coffins? Troost says that the people of this culture had flat spots on the backs of their skulls Did they sigh and roll their eyes when folks with non-flat skulls showed up at East Nashville eateries?
One a more serious note: does the city know this site is there? Do the developers? If the developers go forward with the neighborhood as they’ve proposed, I don’t see how it can’t destroy what’s left of this site. You can’t build tall buildings without digging down. We have laws in place that will dictate what the developers have to do in this situation. But if you’re still stinging from how quickly we just slapped a ballpark on the saltworks, keep in mind that that was what the law allowed.
Can we save this history before it’s lost?
