Land clearing in Smithville, TN

Four hundred feet above the lake

Smithville sits on the Eastern Highland Rim at about 1,040 feet. Center Hill Lake is roughly four hundred feet below the courthouse square, and it doesn’t come down gently. The Caney Fork and the Falling Water River both reach the lake through gorges, and the ground between them is knobs and hollows. Any tract near the water carries some of it.

Rock all the way down

Hillsides running to the water are cherty limestone. Chert gravel through the whole profile, grades that can run past fifty percent, drainage sharp enough that the top dries out fast. Ground like that never got plowed, so it stands in second-growth hardwood. Tuliptree, sugar maple, white ash, oak and hickory carry it, with cedar and briars wherever light gets through. On that much rock a drum rides high and works slow. For a sightline and a way down to the water, the timber stays and the understory goes.

What the lake left

Center Hill Dam closed in 1948 and put the Caney Fork bottoms under water. Several small communities went under with thousands of acres of farm ground, and the families moved up. What’s in private hands now is ridgetop and slope: two or three feet of silt loam up top where the hay and the cattle are, thin rocky ground the minute you go off the edge. Take cattle off a ridge field and cedar has it inside a few years.

Thirty-six miles out US 70

Northwest to Lebanon it’s US 70 the whole way, signed SR 26 and running through Smithville as Broad Street. SR 56 crosses it a few blocks southeast of the square and runs thirteen miles north to I-40. The dam is a different trip. SR 96 leaves US 70 just northwest of town, takes the shoreline as Dale Ridge Road, and meets SR 141 at the dam, where the two cross over together. On the lake side, the drive down to a lot is often steeper than the road in.