Land clearing in Rural Hill, TN

The crossroads on Stewarts Ferry Pike

Rural Hill sits about fifteen miles southwest of Lebanon, on Stewarts Ferry Pike, four miles west of Gladeville. Highway 171 runs through here too; south of town it drops through Long Hunter State Park and over Percy Priest Lake. Union patrols met Confederate resistance at this crossroads twice in late 1862. The ground sits at 581 feet, Central Basin, limestone close underneath, and that depth decides everything. An inch or two of dirt over rock leaves open glade. Past four inches, red cedar takes a field fast once the mowing stops.

Bottoms along Suggs Creek

Suggs Creek runs across the north side of the community, and its north fork drains the ground just east of it. Creek bottom is different ground from the ridge above. Privet and bush honeysuckle get down in there and hold on. The soil stays damp late into the year. These streams move. A Wilson County creek can hit flood peak inside six hours of hard rain, mostly winter and early spring, so the week you pick matters on bottom like this.

Long drives off the pike

Houses out this way sit well back from the road, and the lane in is usually the first thing that needs attention. Brush closes from both sides a foot a year until a delivery truck starts scraping its mirrors. Widen it back out and you get two things at once, room for a truck, and a sight line at the road end where the pike traffic runs.

Acreage that never got subdivided

Acreage here stayed acreage. Mt. Juliet is six miles north and filling in hard, but Rural Hill counted 2,047 people in 2020, down a little from 2010. That leaves old tracts, cedar standing in what used to be pasture, hardwood stands with an understory so thick you can’t see fifty feet in. Ground like that comes back. Take the understory out, leave the trees worth leaving, and the shape of the place shows up again.