Land clearing in Castalian Springs, TN

A hill between two creeks

The old station sat on a hill slope, Bledsoe Creek down the west side, Bledsoe Lick Creek down the east, and the mineral spring at the foot. The community spread along the highway from there. About 495 feet. Central Basin, limestone close under the grass, thin soil over it on the rise. That’s cedar ground. Red cedar is a pioneer tree, first thing back on bare dirt, and it grows on rock. Turn a pasture out two seasons and cedar and briars own the fencerows.

Bottoms that never quite dry

Bledsoe Creek comes down off the Highland Rim, and its last two miles are backwater off Old Hickory Lake, which holds at 445 feet. So the bottom ground sits near lake level, fifty feet under the settlement and a hundred under the fort hill. Low ground like that doesn’t firm up the way a hilltop does. Privet is the trouble down in it. It comes back from a cut stem, and once it closes along a bank nothing else grows underneath.

Old ground, still being farmed

People have worked this hill since Bledsoe’s Lick drew game, then settlers, in the 1780s. Farming took the small mounds on the terrace above that same lick creek down to faint traces. The big Mississippian one is still standing. Cragfont stands on its rocky bluff with a spring at the base, and open fields run against thick woods. Ground carrying that much history gets cleared differently. A mulching head works at the surface, so a field opens back up without a blade turning it over.

Between Gallatin and Hartsville

Highway 25 runs the length of it, Gallatin seven miles west and Hartsville about eleven the other way. It’s thirteen miles north of Lebanon on a map, but the Cumberland is in the way, so the road runs longer. It’s 109 across the river to Gallatin, then east on 25. Gallatin is the pressure on this ground. It grew almost half again between the last two counts, and that push comes east along 25 into the old farms.