Land clearing in Millersville, TN

A four-hundred-foot step

Millersville covers about fourteen square miles and sits in two counties. Creek bottoms near the pike sit close to five hundred feet, in the Outer Nashville Basin. Ridges run past eight hundred fifty, and the caps northwest, over the Robertson County line, are Western Highland Rim. Soil and regrowth change with the height, so two properties a mile apart don’t clear alike.

Chert right at the surface

Slope ground is mostly Sulphura channery silt loam, on grades up to fifty-five percent. Channery means thin, flat rock fragments of siltstone, shale and chert sitting in the topsoil, not under it. Dellrose carries the same rock down onto the footslopes, and Sengtown carries it over the ridges. Where Barfield meets rock outcrop the soil is only inches deep. That’s glade ground, and cedar takes it first once a field goes quiet. Rock that close wants the drum carried high, off the dirt.

Flats that hold water under them

Some of the level pieces are Dickson, Taft and Sango silt loam, each with a dense pan a couple of feet down. Rain perches on it, so ground that looks dry on top isn’t dry underneath. Water leaves this town three ways. Slaters Creek, Mansker Creek and Madison Creek carry the south side toward the Cumberland. Hogan Branch and Indian Trail Creek take the east end to Old Hickory. Sulphur Fork runs north to the Red River. Bottoms along all of them fill in with privet, greenbrier and box elder.

Understory out, canopy left

Much of the open ground left in Millersville is the back half of a lot off Louisville Highway, Bethel Road or Slaters Creek Road. Front mowed, back gone to brush. On ground like that the big timber is worth keeping. Pull the understory out and a wall of green turns into woods you can walk, with enough canopy left that the briars don’t come back fast. Millersville sits about twenty-six miles west-northwest of Lebanon, an easy haul from Wilson County.