220 Capitol Blvd housed the earliest incarnation of the publishing powerhouse, Acuff-Rose. These are the rooms where the Nashville publishing industry essentially started and grew to unimaginable success as Roy Acuff and Hank Williams’ hits kept coming.

Acuff-Rose eventually outgrew this room and moved to a much bigger office complex at 2510 Franklin Road, which housed multiple publishing companies, a state-of-the-art recording studio, and Hickory Records. Over the years, Acuff-Rose has held the catalogs of Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Roy Orbison, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, The Everly Brothers, Mickey Newbury, and literally countless others. Acuff-Rose has long since been absorbed into the Music Row-based Sony/ATV Publishing but it’s catalog of songs still dominates the publishing world and this landmark still stands.

This land previously known as Cockrill Springs was once the farmland belonging to Ann Robertson Johnson Cockrill, the wife of John Cockrill and the sister of General James Robertson. It was here that she organized the first schooling for pioneer children, thus becoming Tennessee’s first schoolteacher and even Nashville’s first Sunday school teacher. Ann had been granted the land after heroic efforts in an Indian attack on Fort Watauga; throughout the years, the grounds have been the state fairgrounds, a racetrack, a public park, and perhaps most notably, the site of the 1897 Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition, which brought about a number of exhibits like a pyramid and the well-known replica of the Parthenon.

Built in 1932 and designed by New York architect Bryant Fleming, this mansion was the private home of Leslie Cheek, and his wife, Mabel. Leslie and Mabel had wisely invested in a company Leslie’s cousin, Joel Cheek, had started. Joel was blending and marketing his own coffee, which was named after the most famous hotel in Nashville…the Maxwell House.

When General Foods (then Postum) bought the coffee company from the Cheeks for $40 million, Leslie and Mabel commissioned Fleming to design and build the house and grounds that you see today. In 1960, the property and mansion were opened as an art museum and botanical gardens, funded and managed by a number of civic groups such as the Horticulture Society of Middle Tennessee and the Exchange Club of Nashville. Cheekwood famously features the largest collection of Worcester porcelain in America.

Paid tours are offered Tuesday through Sunday.

If one were to take eastbound 1-40 exit onto Jefferson Street, one would drive through the phantom front doors of the once great Club Del Morocco. Jefferson Street hosted a number of smoky clubs and intimate venues where it was not unusual to see Little Richard, Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, and Ella Fitzgerald perform. The famous Blue Room at the Club Del Morocco had perhaps the most energy, as word spread quickly about their house band, the King Kasuals, and their guitarist “Marbles”. His mama knew him as “Jimmy” but the world knew him better as Jimi Hendrix.

The insertion of the interstate system rerouted businesses around Jefferson Street, spelling the end of the Del Morocco along with over 125 businesses.

The deadliest rail accident in U.S. history occurred at Dutchman’s Curve, west of downtown Nashville on July 9, 1918, killing 101 people and injuring 171 others.

At 7:15 that morning, the No. 4 train, traveling from Nashville to Memphis, failed to wait for the No. 1 train, en route from Memphis to Nashville, and the two NC&StL railway trains collided at nearly 60 miles per hour. Miscommunication and procedure errors resulted in the two trains sharing a 10-mile long single stretch of track, culminating in a crash that could be heard over 2 miles away. Tragically ironic, this was to be the engineer of the No. 4 trains final run before retirement.

The wreck site is still accessible via the Richland Creek Greenway, just off of White Bridge Road. A wayside offers a brief history of the event and also showcases a few artifacts along with the existing abutments from the original stretch of track.

Arguably the most disastrous, if not the most famous, fire in Nashville history happened on March 22, 1916 at this spot. The cause of the fire is unknown – some suspect the tenant of the building, Seagraves and Company Planning Mill, while others suspect children running amuck - but what is known is that it destroyed 648 structures over 32 blocks across nearly 2.5 miles of East Nashville. Against all odds, only one life was lost. No traces can be found today except for East Park, built over the ruins on Woodland St.

Inscription: E. L. Hampton’s pasture became “Hampton Field” when transient airplanes began landing here during the first World War. About 2,000 feet long from here west, bounded north and south by Golf Club Lane and Woodmont Boulevard, it continued in use as Nashville’s first airfield about five years until the opening of Blackwood Field in 1921. Erected 1970 by The Historical Commission of Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County. Marker Number 31.

Inscription: Across the alley stood the first Masonic Hall in the state, designed by architect Hugh Roland in 1818. Marquis de la Fayette was entertained there in 1825 by Past Grand Master Andrew Jackson. The 17th General Assembly of Tennessee met there in 1827. The structure, much used as a civic center, burned in 1856. The rebuilt hall was used as a hospital supply store by Federal troops during the Civil War. Tennessee Historical Commission. Marker Number 3A 186

Inscription: The original stockade fronted on the river slightly north of here, covering an area of about two acres. In that enclosure, on May 13, 1780, representatives of this and other settlements met and adopted the Cumberland Compact for the government of the new settlement. About 500 yards west, April 2, 1781, settlers, assisted by dogs, drove off the Indians in the Battle of the Bluffs. Tennessee Historical Commission. Marker Number 3A 33

Fort Negley, named for General James S. Negley, was a Union outpost built in 1862 that made Nashville the most fortified city in North America at the time. It’s innovative design of bombproof bastions, redans, and triangular parapets made the fort virtually impenetrable. While its cannons fired the first shots of the Battle of Nashville in 1864, another point of interest is that it deteriorated into severe disrepair since the people of Nashville had no desire to commemorate a Union Fort. It was eventually reconstructed and reopened in 2004.

While this author would enjoy nothing more than to describe the moment of inception of the great city of Nashville in his own words, none speak it better than the plaque that marks the spot of this great meeting.

Inscription: On Monday, April 24, 1780, two pioneers, James Robertson and John Donelson, shook hands upon the completion of a reunion at the site on which you now stand. Each man, one by land, the other by water, played out in a two-fold plan for a new settlement that grew into present-day Nashville. Robertson, at the head of his mounted band of 226 frontiersmen, traversed the long, circuitous overland route through Kentucky and Tennessee down to the Great Salt Lick. His group arrived on Christmas Day, 1779, about the time that Donelson’s flotilla left Fort Patrick Henry, and at once set about preparing a place for the boatmen, women, and children who were to join them later.

Robertson, as one of the earliest and most resourceful frontiersmen of early Tennessee history, had long realized that the rolling country and rich bottomland of middle Tennessee would be an ideal location for a settlement. Although much warfare and violence were inevitable, it was his ability to deal with the Indians and their mutual respect and admiration for him that made this venture possible. He said, “we are the advance guard; our way is westward across the continent.” But civilization could only begin with the river-borne families that were to come in the spring. In four months these families floated the entire extent of the Tennessee River, then turned north to the Ohio and came up the Cumberland to the Great Salt Lick – a 1000-mile trip unequalled in the annals of American history. This flotilla was headed by the courageous Colonel John Donelson on his flagship Adventure. He triumphed over freezing weather, the treacheries of a river at the highest in its history, pestilence, and savage Indians to reach his April rendezvous. This achievement has immortalized his name, for he managed it so well that no man could have done it better. His responsibilities were great because he had in his charge a large percentage of non-combatants.

In this memorial group each man stands as a representative of the hardy souls he led to fulfill a magnificent destiny. In this historic handshake each brave pioneer finds his place in history. No city should be indifferent to its founding, no people to its history, especially when so full of heroic action and noble deeds as is the history of Nashville. If space were available the name of every signer of the Cumberland Compact should be here; these two men stand witness to their toil and devotion. This statue, commissioned by Mayor Ben West in 1962, was erected here in the fort where they met the flowering spring day of long ago. This statue is intended to keep their memory green and our love for them tender and profound. These men are the trees; we are their fruit. Erected 1962 by Mayor Ben West and the Metro Historical Commission.

Inscription: In 1834, the State of TN hired Professor James Hamilton to find its geographic center in order to locate the state capital as near as possible to the center of the state. However, certain circumstances and politics left the capital in Nashville, although Gov. James K. Polk wanted it moved to Murfreesboro. In 1976, 1/2 mile N.E. on Old Lascassas Rd. an obelisk was placed by the Rutherford County Historical Society at the state’s geographic center. Tennessee Historical Commission. Marker Number 3A 166.

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