Uncovering the Origin of Nashville's Charlotte Pike

A thing you can count on with Nashville pikes is that they mostly go to the place they’re named for. Franklin Pike goes to Franklin. Gallatin Pike goes to Gallatin. Harding Pike goes to Belle Meade, home of the Hardings. Even pikes named for places that no longer exist went to those places. Dickerson Pike went to the Dickenson Meeting House. (Yes, someone at some point changed the N to an R.) Granny White Pike went by Granny White’s tavern. Hillsboro Pike still goes to Hillsboro — Hillsboro just changed its name to Leipers Fork. And so on.

But there is one glaring exception. Charlotte Pike does not go to Charlotte, Tenn. It doesn’t even go near Charlotte. You have a better chance of getting to Charlotte by lying in random truck beds at the Ashland City Walmart and going wherever the driver is headed next than you do by driving out Charlotte Pike.

For years, I have railed against this fact, like an old man shaking his fist at the sky. Charlotte Pike does not go to Charlotte. The deepest conspiracy theorist had nothing on me. People would argue with me, “Of course it does.” “Look at a map, man, that’s what they want you to think!”

Maybe it was Charlotte Pike because it went out past Charlotte Robertson’s house? Maybe there was an early Robertson iron forge that was out that way, this side of the Harpeth River, that the road went to?

Whatever the reason, there was some discrepancy, but it was a discrepancy that was an undeniable fact: You can’t take Charlotte Pike to Charlotte the town.

Should I have consulted the maps at the Tennessee State Library and Archives at any point to clear this up? Of course. Did I? Um ... hey, look over there! I think that’s Elvis coming out of Krispy Kreme.

Anyway, I recently stumbled across two maps at the Tennessee State Library and Archives. (Unofficial motto: "Check with us before putting on your tinfoil hat.") They show two different routes from Nashville to Charlotte. In this 1795 map, you can see Glover’s Trace (though not Charlotte yet), which leaves Nashville and heads west. But there are two interesting things about this map when viewed in conjunction with the maps of iron furnaces out there. When James Robertson went out to look for potential spots for iron works, following Glover’s Trace would have seemed to place him crossing the river at the Narrows of the Harpeth, and it would have taken him very near where he founded what is now known as Cumberland Furnace. In other words, this route puts people in the spots we know they ended up in.

I suspect you could get a pretty good approximation of this route from the Narrows to Charlotte by taking Leatherwood Road to Leatherwood Creek and taking Miller Road as far as it goes; then you’d have to follow the creek to its end (don’t do this, folks, it would be trespassing), and then trudge over to Petty Road, which would take you into Charlotte.

But by 1833, the road to Charlotte — by this point, one that would have been regularly taken by stagecoach — seems to cross the Harpeth farther south, near where 70 crosses the Harpeth today. That brought me to Matthew Rhea’s hand-drawn 1832 map, which is crude, but appears to have been made by a person familiar with the area. And the important bit of information it gives: Charlotte Road crossed the Harpeth south of the Narrows and ran north of White Bluff.

Then I read this really interesting and helpful blog post by DJ Hutcherson, which locates two of the tollgates for the pike: one on Sullivan’s Ridge and one along Dog Creek Road.

The final piece of the puzzle was when my friend Sunny Fleming mentioned that she had lived near Old Charlotte Pike growing up in Williamson County. So not every Charlotte Pike I was going to find was going to be the Nashville-Charlotte Pike. There were at least remnants of a Franklin-Charlotte Pike out there, too.

But now I had some good data points — the vague locations of the two tollgates, the Harpeth crossing south of the Narrows, and the road going north of White Bluff. Plus, there are tons of roads still named Old Charlotte Pike. You can’t take them from Nashville to Charlotte anymore, but you can come pretty damn close.

Here, I speculate, is the stagecoach route between Nashville and Charlotte. Take the Old Charlotte Pike that runs behind Tailgate Brewery and head west. When you get to Pond Creek Road, you’re going to see Old Charlotte Pike to your left. This, I believe, is the north end of the Franklin-Charlotte Pike. Don’t turn on it. Instead, get on Gourley Road and continue west-ish. Shortly, you’re going to hook back up with Old Charlotte Pike to your right. You’re going to dead-end at Sam’s Creek Pike, but I believe that in the olden days, you would have been able to keep going and hook up with Dog Creek Road, home of the second tollgate.

You then get on 70 for a while until you get to what is now White Bluff. Even on maps now, you can see how 70 starts to angle away from the center of White Bluff (though the town has grown out to the road), and just as 70 curves back more westerly, Old Charlotte Pike continues the angle 70 had been making. Eventually this Old Charlotte Pike runs into state road 47, which takes you to Charlotte.

It’s incredibly satisfying. The drive is beautiful. Fair warning, though: Sullivan’s Ridge is no joke, and you will be on narrow roads with steep drop-offs. Some of the steep drop-offs, however, drop off down to what is clearly the old roadbed for the stage coaches, which is cool as hell.

It gives you a really good sense of how difficult travel was in the days before cars, and just how easy it would have been to get lost. You also get a feel for just how important creeks were for navigating the countryside. It also really gave me sympathy for how much we’ve constructed in floodplains.

Charlotte had once been the most important town in Dickson County. It’s central, and the most important early industry used it as a hub for business. But once the railroad went west, it was easier to stay south of the ridge, which meant staying south of Charlotte. And so a town once so important to Nashville’s economic life that a road was constructed that would take you directly there became so unimportant that — unlike all the other pikes headed out of Nashville — the road broke into bits and disappeared.