I’ll bet you didn’t know that in 1910 Nashville was the center of the largest and best hardwood region in the world and that the city handled practically the world’s supply of red cedar.
Nashville was also one of the world’s great markets for chestnut trees. With possibly one exception, Nashville was the largest hardwood producing city in the world. Lumber factories along the river in East Nashville consumed approximately 100,000,000 feet of hardwoods per year. They employed 2,295 male workers and had on hand in their lumber yards, 125 million feet of lumber.
Soon after Irene and I bought a house at 4428 Warner Place in 1967, I met our neighbor across the street, Thomas I. Webb, Jr, then 87 years old. He told me that when he was a boy he could walk to town on all the rafts tied up end to end on the east bank of the Cumberland River from where Shelby Park is today to the lumber yards across the river from downtown Nashville.
Of the 42,000 square miles in Tennessee, in 1910, 35 percent, or 14,717 square miles, were still covered with forests, the best of which were in Middle and East Tennessee.