Michelle Willard, The Murfreesboro Post, January 24, 2010
Tucked behind hedges at the corner of Pitts Lane and Patriot Drive, a dogtrot-style log home hides from public view. But employees of Rutherford County were out looking for it. The group of four was out touring the county in search of more than 4,000 historic structures as part of a survey funded in part by the Tennessee Historic Commission. The commission wants to update and digitize previous historic structure surveys for Rutherford County as part of a statewide initiative.
Rutherford County Archivist John Lodl, who is spearheading the local project, said the data will help future growth and development to avoid the destruction of historic structures.
This will be another layer for the planning department, so they can know where the historic structures are, he said. It will also document buildings lost to development and neglect.
I’m excited that whatever we have left people can look for, but whats gone is gone and we cant bring it back, said Denise Carlton from the Heritage Partnership of Rutherford County. This will give us a good idea of what has been lost.
Dating back to the 1800s, the two-story home on Pitts Lane was lucky not to have been lost. Since 1970, Rutherford County’s population has grown more than 300 percent to become the fifth most populous county in the state. Along with the population came development and with the development came the loss of some historic structures.
At the beginning of the population boom in 1980, a group of MTSU history students, armed with maps and clipboards, traveled the county and recorded more than 4,000 historic homes, barns and other structures. Now for the next 10 weeks, current MTSU graduate students in history will make the same trek, armed with laptops and GPS equipment, to update the survey by traveling more than 2,000 miles in the county in search of the previously recorded buildings.
Volunteers will take to the streets of Murfreesboro, La Vergne and Smyrna over the summer to record historic buildings in the cities. And the public will be able to find those same structures through a Historical Commission Web site dedicated to historic structures across the state. Then the information, such as site surveys, GPS coordinates and photographs, will be uploaded onto a searchable Web site for public use.
We want to make it accessible so people can see it, Lodl said. Lodl said the state’s goal is to do this in every county, but Rutherford will be one of the first to finish.
Carlton is excited about the project to see what all has been lost. This will put facts to peoples assumptions, she said. She hopes the information can help the Regional Planning Commission protect historic sites and form new policy for the Rutherford County Comprehensive Land Use Plan. This project gives a baseline for use by planners and general public, she said. Its finding the pieces of heritage that can be used somewhere else and so they can be preserved.
Preserved like the log cabin on Patriot Drive, which is but a stones throw from Oakland High School and more recent development, yet somehow was saved. Were starting to pass things on to the next generation and its nice to know well have more information to pass along, Carlton said.
Michelle Willard can be contacted at 615-869-0816 or [email protected].