If you were to drive one mile south of downtown and hang a left on Anthes Drive which snakes down to the Cumberland River, you would find over 20 acres of land that are now fenced off and flanked with barbed wire and “no trespassing” signs. Over the past 40 years, thousands of unhoused Nashvillians have called this land home. Before it was closed by city officials in June of 2025, the area was endearingly, and somewhat notoriously, known as Old Tent City.
On my first visit to the camp in September of 2008, thick morning fog held around trees, emanating from the riverbank. I walked the well-worn footpath with other outreach workers past the Music City Star tracks along an old chain-link fence. The scent of campfire smoke hoovered in the air. Goldenrod simmered in the brush, ironweed radiated purple, and a lattice of summer-worn trumpet vines reached toward the Silliman Evans bridge high above our heads. Beneath its shelter and in the surrounding woods stood dozens of tents and impressive shanties, some with porches, wood burning stoves, and make-shift food pantries.
This was the Great Recession. While some residents had lived in the camp for years, others were more recently displaced from natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina or manmade economic disasters like the financial crisis. Still others were displaced from downtown after an anti-panhandling campaign spearheaded by the Nashville Downtown Partnership.
“We fell on hard times,” I heard from resident after resident, but the reality in the United States, as anthropologist Brian Goldstone writes, is that it’s not so much that people are falling into homelessness. They are being pushed.
Low wages. High rents. Predatory lending. Medical debt. Systemic racism. Disappearing social safety nets. Nonexistent tenant rights. Policies that punish but never heal.
Just after my first visit to the camp in 2008, police officers tried to shut it down. I was working at Park Center’s Homeless Outreach Program at the time and my coworkers and I organized with residents and other service providers to fight the closure.
Just before a public rally about the closure, we received word from Father Charlie Strobel, founder of Room in the Inn, that Mayor Karl Dean had given the camp a reprieve. Earlier that week, Charlie had quietly taken the Mayor down to the camp to meet the residents, and that experience, along with mounting pressure, changed his mind.
“All we ever asked for was a chance to prove this city wrong about who we are,” said Pontiac, one of the residents, at the rally-turned-celebration. “Today,” he continued, “that chance has been granted.”
The camp was allowed to stay open while we worked on a long term plan through a subcommittee of the Metro Homelessness Commission and moved residents into housing.
Then came the flood.
Between Disasters | 2010-2020
Beginning on May 1, 2010, Nashville experienced three days of record-breaking rainfall. Fearing a dam would give way, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released billions of gallons of water into the Cumberland River. Massive flooding ensued. Nearly 10,000 people were displaced, including over 120 residents of Old Tent City. Water rose around tents in a matter of minutes and residents lost everything they couldn’t carry. An outreach minister helped as many people evacuate as possible, and I met dozens of drenched, disoriented residents and their pets at the Red Cross shelter.
When the shelter closed, city officials capitalized on the environmental disaster. Old Tent City, like much of downtown, had been inundated with floodwater and diesel fuel. The camp, however, was labeled “condemned” rather than “contaminated”—a designation that excluded it from public assistance for cleanup efforts. We were told that anyone who went back would be arrested on the spot.
Some residents moved to other camps, some received FEMA assistance and moved into hotels or housing, and still others moved to a private two-acre parcel of donated land in Antioch until local residents ran them off. “The gates of Antioch’s charity are closed,” said one local pastor.
The experience of journeying alongside camp residents before, during, and after the flood led a group of us to start Open Table Nashville in the fall of 2010. We vowed to do everything we could to stand in the gap with people who had been abandoned by our city, our systems, and our society. We carry that promise with us to this day.
The population of Old Tent City remained low for years but gradually began to rise as other camps closed and people were directed there by police officers, outreach workers, and others on the street. Then came the pandemic. Camp populations across the city and nation surged as the economy shuddered and shelter capacity constricted. As other camps closed, more people were told to go to Old Tent City, and as the population grew, so did the problems.
Old Tent City has always been a microcosm of society where the most inspiring acts of hospitality co-mingle with devastating acts of desperation and harm. To romanticize the camp is as problematic as villanizing it. The truth about the camp is much more complex.
Some of the first camp residents I met — “Papa Smurf,” a carpenter who made driftwood crosses, and “Mother Teresa,” a saint of a woman — once cared for a man with a broken neck and two shattered arms in their “hospital wing.” When volunteer groups came down, they stocked extra food on their shelves to share with others, and when the Mission turned away a man who was legally blind, they offered to take him in until outreach workers could find a place for him to go.
Then there was Stacey, Bama, Wendell, Vegas, McGyver, TeeTee and others who formed a self-governing council at the camp in 2009 and had security patrols, a donation distribution center and even first aid support. Later, there was Mama V and her crew, along with so many others, who brought stability, humor and care to those around them and adopted stray pets and people along the way. “We’re street family,” they said.
Just as every coin has two sides, there were two sides to the camp. While some who gravitated to the camp built a community, cared for each other and connected with housing resources, others took advantage of vulnerable residents. Whether that was through selling drugs that promised to numb the searing pain in people’s lives or trapping residents in cycles of abuse, serious issues festered. There were fights, overdoses, deaths, hospitalizations and compounded trauma.
Just like the residents, the mulberry trees, blackberry bushes and thistles that grew on the land bloomed despite the toxic soil in which they were planted. The resilience of the plants converted toxicity into beauty and healing. But the tainted soil also contaminated some of the fruit.
History of the Land | 1400s-1900s
Long before European settlers arrived in the 1700’s, Nashville’s downtown area was home to Indigenous communities like members of the Shawnee, Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Mescogee nations. Cherokee activist Albert Bender and other historians say that before the 1400s, downtown Nashville and the surrounding area was home to a massive Indigenous metropolis of over 400,000 people with advanced agricultural systems, a salt-making industry and organized leadership.
In the mid-1400s, however, the population “mysteriously disappeared,” says Bender, perhaps due to environmental disaster or disease. The area later became a hunting ground with smaller villages for different tribes. French traders arrived and built a trading post in the late 1600s, and by the late 1700s, American explorer James Robertson founded Fort Nashorough, the European-American settlement which would later become the city of Nashville.
For years, cycles of cooperation, conflict, treaties, and land struggles ensued between settlers and Indigenous tribes. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law, legalizing the forcible removal of Indigenous people across the nation. In Nashville in 1838, members of the Cherokee and Muscogee nations, as well as enslaved Africans, were brutally marched through downtown on the Trail of Tears.
This violent expulsion of Indigenous and Black residents of Nashville set the tone for what was lawful and allowable in the name of “progress” and development.
Legalized land theft for the sake of profit continues to this day. Gentrification is the cousin of colonization. Patterns continue until they’re broken and transformed, and we’ve yet to break those cycles. Nashville’s “soil” has been sullied with greed, displacement, inequity, and violence for centuries.
Before the 1850s, the area that became Old Tent City was owned by John L. Hadley, Sr., a well-known white enslaver and property owner. In 1854, Hadley sold the land to the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Nashville. After the Civil War, the Tennessee School for the Blind was relocated and expanded at the top of the hill in the Claiborne mansion, and around the same time, the Tennessee Central Railway was established to connect downtown with coal, timber, and other natural resources.
When the area was surveyed in the early 1920s, a plat map described a nearby lime kiln and pumping station. In 1927, however, a historic flood, more far-reaching than the flood of 2010, consumed the area. From 1938 to 1969, the property changed hands several times between the City of Nashville, private individuals, and multiple oil companies like Southern Oil Service, Triangle Refineries, and Chevron. The area was a hub for oil and transportation with multiple large oil tanks on site, the remnants of which are still visible today.
The Beginning of Old Tent City | 1980s
One of the first — and, ironically, one of the last — campers to call Old Tent City home was Arthur “Junebug” Mcquiston. By 1982 or 1983, when Arthur was in his early twenties, he wandered down to a “wide open” patch of land with a handful of others. “I built a shack down there,” he said. “It was home. We governed our own, and most of the time it was pretty peaceful.” He said he and his friends sought the area out because “we couldn’t get in housing and people were harassed by the police downtown. It ain’t much different now.”
Around the same time, tent communities were also flourishing along other stretches of the Cumberland River on the East bank. Photographer Lee Steenhuis documented two such river camps beneath the downtown and East sections of the James Robertson and Woodland Street bridges in her tender exploration of misfit-communities, “Hippies, Fairies, and Trolls.” There were well-constructed shanty-homes with porches, flower pots, and woodburning stoves. Veterans, like Arthur, trainhoppers, and others who had been pushed to the fringes of society were creating their own alternative societies in the shadows of Nashville’s relentless progress.
According to Arthur, homelessness in Nashville started picking up in the early ‘70s.
“There were transients coming in, train hoppers, and a lot of mental patients that were turned out on the streets,” he said. “Then in the ‘80s was when we had a lot more people out.”
Arthur’s recollections track with local and national trends. The deinstitutionalization of psychiatric facilities picked up in the 1960s and 1970s and failed to provide adequate community-based mental health resources across the country. At the same time, veterans were coming home from the Vietnam War without the safety nets they needed, and the misguided and deeply racist “War on Drugs” was gaining steam.
Researchers say that the early 1980s marked the beginning of mass homelessness in America — a cascading result of faulty policies in the ‘70s, the economic recession, and, most notably, the Reagan administration’s devastating decision to gut funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by 78 percent, cut food stamps and Medicaid, and dismantle social safety nets and programs.
In 1985, Harpeth Hills Church of Christ purchased a tract of land beside Old Tent City at 185 Anthes Dr. This would become the site for Inner City Ministries (ICM). Instead of displacing Tent City residents, ICM’s staff began a chapter of radical accompaniment, grounded in the Christian principle of “loving your neighbor.”
“There were a lot of very good people there,” said Lytle Thomas, humble founder of ICM. “My office was right over the fence. The residents had free run of the place and would come in with us and have coffee in the morning. They enjoyed being there and we enjoyed having them. They helped us and we helped them.”
He continued to share about how ICM allowed residents to charge their phones and use their water.
“They protected and took care of our property, for the most part,” Lytle chuckled. “We had to watch some, but we also hired residents to drive our buses who had their CDL licenses. They drove for us, got other jobs, and moved on.” When I asked him about why he and other ICM staff took that approach to the residents, he said, “You just have to get out of your comfort zone. Love people. That’s the answer.”
After the flood in 2010, ICM relocated and in 2015, Pyles Transport bought the land while the camp continued to grow. In 2022, the Metro Government of Nashville bought the property with the intent to develop it into a $70 million park — a move that marked the beginning of the end of Old Tent City.
Dismantling Old Tent City | 2024 & 2025
My phone buzzed late in the evening on Sept. 6, 2024. It was a text from Moses, one of the residents of the upper portion of Old Tent City whom I’d known for more than 10 years. The text contained no words, only a photo of a notice that had been posted throughout the camp early that morning.
“All structures are scheduled for demolition the week of September 16th through the 20th,” the notice read. It also informed residents that they had to “move out no later than September 13th.”
Confusion and chaos ensued.
At this point, Old Tent City consisted of a number of smaller “subdivisions,” all with their own character. On the asphalt lot toward the top of the hill where Moses lived, most residents stayed in parked RVs, campers, and vehicles, some with their own generators and solar panels. Just down the hill before the tracks around old oil tank rings, a more transient network of residents moved in and out with larger, well-guarded structures toward the cliffs.
Past the tracks and beneath the Silliman Evans bridge, clusters of tents and structures were sprinkled about, holding folks with close ties. Dallas’ two-story treehouse was the center of one cluster and had its own bathroom and septic system. The second story was built around a tree with sliding beam brackets that allowed it to move naturally in the wind. Tyrese’s iconic dome house was another hub closer to the river. His structure, built with reclaimed wood, was the result of skills he’d learned years before at the Fort Negley encampment before it was clear-cut by the city.
In the wooded area along the riverbank were over a dozen different camp areas, all with their own character. There was Will’s fully constructed house with a mailbox, kitchen, electricity, and self-proclaimed address. Further down was Mama V’s RV and camper lot with numerous dogs, a couple cats, and a never-ending supply of “street family.” And closest to downtown, Shay’s tightly run community had its own governance structure, rules, and sense of belonging.
After calling around, we were able to piece together that the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT), who owned the land beneath the Silliman Evans bridge, had placed the notices in conjunction with several Metro Departments. The target of the demolition was six to eight of the homes that were built by people in the shadows of the city that abandoned them.
We had seen this play out before and knew what was coming. Bulldozers. Chainsaws. Skid-steers. Barbed wire. Not just for those in the structures, but for everyone. New luxury condos had recently gone up across the road, and this was prime riverfront real estate, slated for a new shiny “Wharf Park.”
The week after the notices were posted, our team at Open Table Nashville met with over two dozen residents beneath the bridge to hear from the impacted residents about their needs, concerns, and hopes.
“We can’t just pick up and move,” said Dallas. “We have memories here.”
“We’re taxpayers and we pay for the highways we live under,” said Arthur who was back at the camp after being on and off the streets for over 30 years.
During the meeting, residents decided to write a petition to TDOT, Mayor O’Connell, and Council Member Jacob Kupin to share their collective requests. Those included a 90-day extension on any demolition process, the installation of dumpsters and regular trash pick up, permanent housing for residents, a campground where people could go when Tent City closed, and relocation support with access to storage, tents, and tarps for anyone who was displaced.
After some back and forth, Mayor O’Connell established a working group at the city level, a 30-day extension was granted, a plan for dumpster installation was approved, and our team at Open Table Nashville stepped in to raise funding for relocation support.
On the cool, bright morning of Oct. 15, the rumble of bulldozers and excavators rustled birds from their trees and caused an uneasy hush to fall over the camp. It was demolition day. The residents had moved from their structures, but a somber, sick feeling set in as the machinery dismantled the homes, beam by beam. How much longer would we have to bear witness to the violence of a city that tears down people’s homes, always telling them where they can’t go, but rarely where they can?
Life continued at the camp through the fall and the long winter. There were move-ins, deaths, and every form of high and low imaginable. On March 31, 2025, just as the spring was taking root and thistles were in bloom, more notices came, this time from the Mayor’s Office and the Office of Homeless Services.
The notices told the roughly 120 residents that in 60 days, the camp would close for good.
Old Tent City’s Final Days
Just as the existence of Old Tent City defied simple categorization, its closing was also filled with complexity. For some residents, excitement buzzed in the air. This was their chance to escape the living hell of the streets. Their names were bumped to the top of the priority list by the Office of Homeless Services. While hundreds of people who were unhoused across the city waited, Tent City residents were ushered into mostly transitional housing at Rodeway Inn which had been kept open for such a time as this.
For other residents, however, uncertainty, anxiety, and skepticism burrowed into their shoulders and chests, weighing down any sense of optimism.
“You have to realize that there are some of us who struggle with being inside, in a box,” said Shay, the fearless, deeply caring, punk leader of the back section. “It’s because of our past, our traumas. Some people will go out of their mind indoors. We need other options.”
What would it be like to move out of the community they created? What would it be like to be relocated to a section of Harding Place or another area far outside the city’s center; to be rushed into options they might not have otherwise chosen?
Mama V and her crew had eight dogs, one cat, an RV, a camper and a car. Their desire was for land that they could call their own, land they could use to help others in need. “We could call it the Community of Hope,” said Linda, Mama V’s fierce and wiry campmate.
In a new petition she co-authored to Mayor Freddie O’Connell, signed by 20 other current and former residents, Mama V wrote, “All we need is land that we can make into a homeless community. Give us a chance to use part of this land to be a landing place for people. If you take Old Tent City away, people need somewhere to go until they get housing.”
The ultimate goal was always permanent housing — “we want housing,” the petition read — but more was needed for those without.
The petition also invited O’Connell down to the camp to meet with the residents about their concerns. “We want you to physically come down here and see what we’re going through and how we struggle. Visit us. Spend a night or a week out here with us. Try to walk in our shoes.”
O’Connell agreed to meet with camp residents, which buoyed their spirits, but after a press release was sent out detailing their petition, his scheduler cancelled without sending regrets or an explanation.
The closer the deadline got, the more rushed the process felt, particularly for those who didn’t fit into easy boxes: those in RVs and campers, those with histories of trauma and severe mental health issues, and those with background or documentation issues.
Our team at Open Table Nashville amplified the residents’ request for a phased closure, more time, and another site where people could go. We were met with silence and rigidity. We did what we could to support the residents who were most at risk of falling through the cracks. We raised funds to repair and tow RVs, campers, vehicles and motorcycles. We found parking spots, paid fines, reinstated drivers licenses. We journeyed patiently with those who were struggling to pack up their belongings and say goodbye to the place they called home when there was nowhere else to go.
On Sunday, June 1, the day before the closure, there were still over a dozen people who were unsure of their plan, but that didn’t stop the contractors, fencing team, and bulldozers. Monday morning, OHS leaders and MNPD officers led a crew of business men holding parcel maps through the camp while residents were still there. Then came more skid-steers, some of which we had to stop from clearing camps that were still occupied and tents that hadn’t yet been checked.
Every barrier was rolled away for most of the remaining residents who could be found and were willing to work with OHS. One man was found screaming in the woods and a woman was institutionalized against her will. Another man was relocated with his motorcycle. Still others went unaccounted for, leaving for reasons we’ll never know.
Instead of getting to create their “Community of Hope,” Mama V and her crew were moved into a run-down home which is still, four months later, in a state of disrepair.
At the time of the move-in, hurriedly arranged by the Office of Homeless Services, the former tenants were still in the house, which was covered in trash and filth and riddled with electrical issues. There were gaping holes in the walls and ceilings and the house lacked AC and a functional fridge and stove. It was unlivable, but OHS rushed to patch things up and compensate for what they could. The camp was closing and this was labeled as a success.
Only time and thorough follow-up data will prove if all of OHS’s encampment closures have been as successful for camp residents as they’ve been for OHS’s media headlines. OHS reported that their original list of OTC residents included 125 individuals, but the list was never shared with community partners so there has been no way to independently verify who is doing well and who might have fallen through the cracks.
There is no doubt that staff members at OHS truly care about moving people from the streets to housing. But was this closure ultimately more about the long-term stability of the residents or pleasing those in power whose interest is in the “revitalization” of the riverbank and developing the land into another playground for the rich?
“Closing this camp is a temporary Band-Aid that you’re thinking is gonna solve things, but it ain’t,” said Mama V before the closure. “We see all the new people who are coming through. Campsites are being bulldozed everywhere. Where are people going?”
Remembering is an Act of Resistance
Three months after the final closure of Old Tent City, my coworkers at Open Table Nashville — India, Kelly, and I — went down to walk along the familiar tracks. We ran our fingers along the cold chain link fence, topped with multiple rows of barbed wire. As we walked, three members of the clearing crew came up to the fence. We waved, a gesture of goodwill, and they waved back.
“Who are y’all with?” asked one of the men who was heavily tattooed.
“Open Table Nashville,” said Kelly. “We do outreach.”
“Oh, can y’all help me with housing? My time at the halfway house is almost up.”
One of the other men explained that he had recently gotten out of prison and needed help with housing, as well.
Vanderbilt researcher Beth Shinn says “we’ll never end homelessness until we stop the flow of people entering into it.” Closing an encampment cannot be called a success until the underlying causes of Nashville’s housing crisis are addressed. When we have enough housing and resources for all, camps will shrink and close on their own.
If you were to drive one mile south of downtown and hang a left on Anthes Drive in two years, 10 years, 100 years: what, and who, would you find? What stories will be told and what stories will be erased?
Papa Smurf. Mother Teresa. Pontiac. Arthur. Moses. Dallas. Shay. Mama V. Linda. And so, so many more. Remember their names.
Even when the land is developed beyond recognition, the earth will hold the memories of all that came before. Every name, every loss, every win. Every thistle, mulberry, ironweed, and trumpet vine that climbed the columns. Every sacred and sullied iteration of history.
We will not forget.
Thank you to Kelley Sirkoand the Nashville Public Library Archives, archives for providing information on the history of the land from the 1850s-1969. A portion of Old Tent City’s history is captured in the documentary Tent City, U.S.A. and the books “I’ll Take You There: Exploring Nashville’s Social Justice Sites” and “Praying with Our Feet: Pursuing Justice and Healing on the Streets.”