A Brief History of the Nashville - Charlotte Turnpike

A Brief History of the Nashville - Charlotte Turnpike

By DJ Hutcherson

In 1804, James Robertson cut the path of what would later be known as the Nashville - Charlotte Turnpike, often referred to as the Charlotte Road or Charlotte Pike.  Robertson owned several iron furnaces in the area, including several in Dickson County near the town of Charlotte, which was founded in 1803, the same year Dickson County was established.  Charlotte was named after Robertson's wife.

Two years after the road was completed, The Nashville Impartial Review newspaper, dated July 12th, 1806, announced various mail routes in Middle Tennessee, including the opening of a mail route between Nashville and Memphis, which would use the Charlotte Pike.  

In 1829, the road was purchased by The Nashville - Charlotte Turnpike Company, which had been charted that year. This marked the beginning of toll booth operations along parts of the road, officially making it a turnpike. The company was owned by Jetton, Walker & Co. 

After becoming a turnpike road in the 1830's, it was the main stagecoach route between Nashville and Charlotte. According to an ad in a Nashville newspaper, stages would leave Nashville every Friday at 6 A.M., and arrive in Charlotte by noon, meaning it took around 6 hours to travel the entire length of the road at that time. (Approximately 35 - 40 miles)

That same year, a newspaper advertisement appeared in The Arkansas Gazette of February 2nd, 1830.  The ad announces the start of stagecoach service between Nashville and Memphis, with operations set to begin in January 1830.  The stage coaches would run 3 days a week. The ad states that the coaches were lead by a team of four horses, and that the coaches were "fitted up in "superior style" for the passengers. 

By the 1840s, at least two toll gates had been established on the Turnpike. The first was located 6 miles or so from Nashville on top of the first of several ridges known as Sullivan's Ridge. A stage coach stop had been built near the toll gate at the top of the ridge shortly after the Turnpike became a main stage road.  This stage coach stop was primarily used as a place where the teams of exhausted horses could rest and recover for a bit, after just having pulled the heavy stage coaches full of passengers and their luggage up the long, steep grade.

Samuel Adkisson, a wealthy land and slave owner who lived on a large farm in the early to mid 1800's in the area where Dog Creek Cemetery is located, was put in charge of handling the operations of the second toll gate on Charlotte Pike about 20 miles west of Nashville. It was located near his home on Dog Creek, which was located near the area where modern day Dog Creek Cemetery is today.

Adkisson was best known for having been the stone cutter and engineer who had played a roll in assisting iron master Montgomery Bell excavate the tunnel at Narrows of the Harpeth in 1818. The tunnel was completed by 1819 or 1820.  Adkisson probably also worked for Bell in the partial excavation of a second tunnel several years later at the Narrows, located a short distance down river from the first tunnel.  For unknown reasons, the second tunnel was purposefully left unfinished. Samuel Adkisson, along with his wife and their children are buried in Dog Creek Cemetery, not far from where his toll gate was located on Charlotte Pike.

With the advent and rapid construction of railroads by the 1850s, traffic along turnpike roads in Middle Tennessee sharply declined, including the amount of traffic on the Charlotte Pike. The decline was mainly the result of the construction of The Nashville & Northwestern Railroad, which offered travelers a faster, easier, and more comfortable mode of transportation, when compared to traveling by stagecoach. The railroad had been completed from Nashville to Kingston Springs by the beginning of the Civil War, and later to Dickson in 1863.  The trip between Dickson and Nashville took only 3 hours or so by train, while it was still around a 6 hour journey by stagecoach on the turnpike. 

From the late 1860's up until the turn of the century, travelers along the road could stop for a rest or an overnight stay at Nichol's Inn, located near Sullivan's Ridge. It was owned and operated by Lydia Nichols, whose husband was killed while fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War.  The large orchard that surrounded the Inn was famous for its apples and pears.  The structure still stands to this day on Old Charlotte pike, one mile from the first climb up Sullivan's Ridge.

Charlotte Pike was sold in the 1880's, and it's use as a stage coach road eventually came to an end by the 1890's.

Most of the Turnpike was still traversable up until the sometime around the 1930's, but after the construction of the new Memphis - Bristol Highway (Highway 70) was completed in 1926, some sections of the old Charlotte Road were bypassed by the highway and cut off or closed to traffic, including the section between where Dog Creek Road dead ends today to where it would have crossed Sam's Creek Road. 

After passing through Shacklett headed west, the route of the new highway generally followed the old route of the Charlotte Turnpike  between Shacklett and White Bluff. Some sections of the old road can still be seen, especially on each side of the long straight stretch of the Highway just before entering White Bluff.

Sources :

1. "West Nashville, Its People and Environs" by Sarah Foster Kelly, 1988

2. The Economic & Social Beginnings of Tennessee" by Albert C Holt, page 303

3. The Arkansas Gazette, February 2, 1830

4. The Daily Republican Banner (Nashville) February 6, 1830

5. Early North Carolina & Tennessee Land Records, ancestry.com