Land clearing in Tullahoma, TN

Barrens ground

The first settlers called this country the Barrens, and the name still fits what’s underfoot. Town sits at about 1,073 feet on the edge of the Highland Rim, flatter than what surrounds it, level enough that water stands instead of running off. Flat and damp is what growth likes. Under the topsoil it’s cherty limestone, flint gravel all through the subsoil, so a drum head rides a touch higher here than it does on basin ground up around Lebanon. Chert takes teeth off faster than timber ever will.

Old lots in town

Tullahoma started in 1852 as a work camp on the Nashville and Chattanooga line, and the oldest part of town still shows it. Victorian houses on North Atlantic built for merchants and railroad managers, 1920s cottages on North Washington built for railroad workers. Lots like those are a different job from open acreage. Understory work, mostly. Cut the small growth, keep the big shade trees the street was built around, and the lot reads as a yard again.

Out toward Woods Reservoir

Southeast of town the ground drops toward Woods Reservoir, 3,600 acres of the Elk River a hundred feet and more below the streets downtown. The lake and the Arnold base are federal ground, so there’s no clearing out there. Back on the town side, the Barrens flats stay soft well into spring, and privet gets into wet ground and holds. Land like that is worth doing the once rather than trimming the edge every year.

The run down from Lebanon

Take 231 south out of Lebanon, then I-24 southeast past Murfreesboro, and 55 the rest of the way from Manchester. You climb most of the back half, and Tullahoma is a good five hundred feet higher than Lebanon. The country changes with the grade, cedar and pasture giving way to the flat woods and farm fields of the Barrens. Coffee County is the far south end of the fourteen, and Tullahoma sits near the bottom of it.