Land clearing in Lascassas, TN

Bradley Creek and the rock under it

Bradley Creek runs right through Lascassas, thirty-seven square miles of drainage behind it by the time it gets there, and the East Fork of the Stones River swings by about two and a half miles west. That fork runs fifty-four miles, off Short Mountain in Cannon County. Lascassas itself sits around 580 feet, in the Inner Central Basin, where Ordovician limestone isn’t far under the grass.

Two kinds of dirt on one place

Creek bottom soil down there is deep and wet, and privet, honeysuckle and box elder will fill a fencerow in a season. Up on the shelf there might be four inches over solid rock. Cedar glades sit mostly in three counties, Davidson, Rutherford and Wilson, and red cedar rings every one. On limy ground that shallow, a pasture nobody keeps after comes back in cedar and briar rather than grass. Rock that close changes how the head gets run, higher, and slower.

Five acres beside a hay field

Five-acre pieces keep changing hands along Jefferson Pike and Bradley Creek Road, with cattle grazing a half mile from new framing. The Stones River watershed is 44 percent pasture and 23 percent deciduous forest, and both show from most driveways. Some of these places need a building spot and a track back to it. Others run to sixty acres with a back half gone to woods.

The drive down Cainsville Road

State Route 266 leaves US 70 in Lebanon as College Street, becomes Cainsville Road, drops south through Norene, crosses into Rutherford County as Cainsville Pike, and lands in Lascassas, a little over twenty miles, near enough straight south. State Route 96 comes over from Murfreesboro as Lascassas Pike, and the two share pavement briefly in the middle of the community. With a creek at the bottom of the property, what happens to the cut material matters as much as the cutting.