Land clearing in Watertown, TN

Bottoms along Round Lick

Round Lick Creek comes through the middle of Watertown and sets the shape of the place. Bottoms along the water, low rises between. The town went by Three Forks before it took the Waters name. Bottom ground stays damp long after the field above it dries, and damp ground grows privet and briar thicker than anything up on the rise.

Thin clay over limestone

Out of the bottoms the ground climbs a hundred feet and better, onto ridges running past 750. Up there a shallow clay sits straight on limestone at the outer edge of the Central Basin, and the rock is never far down. Red cedar does better on that thin ground than anything else, and it’s the first thing onto a field that stops getting cut.

Ten miles out Sparta Pike

US 70 through town is Sparta Pike, the old Lebanon-to-Sparta road, and the square sits right off it, ten miles southeast of Lebanon. The Highland Rim is off east of here, but the road runs level a good while before it climbs, so the country in between stayed in tracts instead of lots. In November 2025 the county set a minimum lot size on farm ground to keep it out of housing. What’s out here is still acreage, with a back corner on it.

Cedar, and what a mower won’t reach

Cedar has one real weakness: it doesn’t sprout. Cut it and it’s dead, which is why a field that gets bush hogged every year never grows any. The catch is a mower only holds what’s already short. Let a corner go a few seasons and the cedar is past what a bush hog will take, and the sumac under it runs on rhizomes, throwing a thicker stand every time the top comes off. Mulching takes both and leaves the thin ground covered instead of bare.