Land clearing in Liberty, TN

Open ground since 1797

Adam Dale settled here around 1797 and built a mill on Smith Fork Creek, which makes Liberty the oldest town in DeKalb County. Ground that’s been open that long doesn’t come back as forest when you turn it loose. It comes back as cedar, blackberry and privet, creeping in off the fence line a few feet a year until a field is half the size it used to be.

Thin soil over rock

The mule painted on the limestone bluff beside US 70 has been up there longer than anybody can say. The rock is close to the top here. Liberty High School was built out of limestone quarried in the area. On the hillsides above the creek the dirt over that rock runs shallow, so cedar takes those slopes first and holds them. Down in the Smith Fork bottoms it’s the other way around: deep, slow to dry, and thick with privet and cane.

Where the route numbers stack up

US 70 comes through town as the Nashville Highway, and SR 26, SR 53 and SR 96 all ride the same pavement before 96 peels off to the southwest. A lot of property here fronts that road, and frontage grows its own way. The mowed strip ends and the briars start six feet off the shoulder. Driveways lose their sight lines. And nobody wants a burn pile going up beside a four-lane.

Climbing starts east of town

Liberty sits low, down in the Smith Fork valley at about 610 feet. Head east toward Smithville and you climb better than four hundred feet onto the Highland Rim. So the ground here is valley ground: rolling pasture, cedar ridges, and creek bottoms that stay soft. Smith Fork Creek rises over in Wilson County and runs through here, and the trip out from Lebanon is southeast on US 70 the whole way. Shaun would rather stand on a place and look at it than guess from a map.