Land clearing in Old Hickory, TN

A bend in the Cumberland, a lake behind it

The whole neighborhood sits out on Hadley Bend, the Cumberland River wrapping its north and west, Old Hickory Lake holding against the east. The Corps closed the dam in 1954 and has held the pool near 445 feet since. Village ground runs 510, past 530 on the high blocks. Call it seventy or eighty feet down to the water, and the last of it comes off in a hurry.

Deep dirt up top, thinner at the edge

Most of the bend is Maury silt loam, five feet and more before you hit limestone, some of the best dirt in the Central Basin. Cover grows back on it fast. Then the ground tips toward the water and changes its mind. East of the streets it gives up ninety feet inside three hundred, and along the north edge the soil thins onto Mimosa, with rock four or five feet down. Tires slide on that. Tracks don’t.

Honeysuckle under the oaks

Bush honeysuckle is invasive in Tennessee and stands twenty feet tall in a thicket you can’t see through. Privet crowds the damp ground closer to the water the same way. Neither one is heavy timber. It’s understory, and it shades out everything native underneath. On dirt this deep the oak and hickory are worth keeping. Cut what’s choking them, leave the canopy, and the woods behind the house turn back into something you can walk.

Company houses and a hundred years of growth

Old Hickory Village went up as DuPont housing after the 1918 plant agreement, bungalows for the workers, bigger places for management, all of it on a tight grid, and Rayon City grew in beside it. The yards behind those houses have had a century to fill in, and plenty of them have. Lots are small, fences sit close, and the woods start at the property line. Lebanon is about twenty-six miles east, via I-40 or Central Pike, then north on Old Hickory Boulevard.