The ridge the parkway climbs in southern Williamson County divides the waters. Streams on the north side run to the Harpeth and then the Cumberland; streams on the south run to the Duck and then the Tennessee. It was also, for nineteen years, a national boundary. The Treaty of Hopewell in 1786 set the Chickasaw line at the ridge dividing the Cumberland waters from the Tennessee waters, and when Tennessee became a state in 1796 that line still held. The state's own southern edge was the thirty-fifth parallel, a hundred miles further on; everything between was Chickasaw country, and a traveller riding out of Nashville left United States settlement inside a day. The divide is not dramatic to look at, just a long rise in a wooded ridge.
The road was the opening move. The 1801 agreement that let the army cut a wagon road through Chickasaw land does not mention the post anywhere in it; what it grants is a convenient wagon road as a highway for the citizens of the United States and the Chickasaws, on terms of reciprocal advantage and mutual convenience. In 1805 the Chickasaw ceded a great tract running south and west of the divide, and for a while the Old Trace itself became the border. Further cessions followed until 1818, and by 1832 the nation had been removed west. The line is invisible now except as a rise in the road and a change in which way the creeks run.
Getting there
35.8371, -87.0645
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
