A short trip through the history of traffic in Williamson County
September 15, 2016
Franklin Home Page
by Corey Little
Dial-up modems were the dirt roads of the Internet.
Only with the advent of broadband, cable and high-speed connections — the interstates of the Internet — did the online community of today grow to what it is now.
Likewise, the shift from dirt roads and turnpikes to interstate highways sparked similar rapid change, and brought traffic to places it hadn’t been before.
The old U.S. 31, built in the late 1920s, gave way to Interstate 65 in the 1960s to early ‘70s. I-65 crossed through the farmland of Williamson County to replace the old U.S. highway, called variously Franklin Pike, Columbia Pike and the Andrew Jackson Highway. The resulting explosion of development up and down the interstate’s corridor changed Franklin, Williamson County and Middle Tennessee forever.
“From Brentwood to Columbia, through Spring Hill and Franklin- what was called the Andrew Jackson Highway went all the way from Chicago to Mobile, and straight through Main Street in downtown Franklin,” said Rick Warwick, historian for the Heritage Foundation of Franklin and Williamson County.
Austin Peay, the governor of Tennessee from 1923 to 1927, got the idea of
doing away with turnpikes, the predominant road system prior to the 1920s and a relic of the horse-drawn era. The turnpikes were variously and complexly owned and operated.
They got the idea to go north south, and each of the states made an agreement that they would help build it.
According to Warwick, Peay went to Williamson County and said if it bought the turnpikes, the state would build the roads.
“To buy Franklin Road cost something like $100,000,” said Warwick.
Thus, construction on what is now U.S. 31 started in 1925, and reached Williamson County in 1927 before finally opening in earnest in 1929.
It took the major north-south cross-country route straight through downtown Franklin, and changed its economy in the process.
There were several hotels, some more reputable than others, to put it delicately; there were bars and honky tonks all along the stretch between Franklin and Brentwood. Freight and semi-trucks would roll through town day and night.
In fact, according to Warwick, the city of Franklin had to change the way cars parked, from at an angle to parallel, to give the trucks more room.
But under President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s interstate highway plan, the impetus for Interstate 65 began in the 1950s.
By the time it reached Williamson County in the late 1960s it pulled the center of gravity of Franklin a few miles east.
“Without the interstate Franklin would be stuck on Main Street,” said Warwick. “All the businesses that have developed along the interstate would not have happened. Cool Springs would still be farmland.”
As the interstate increased capacity for traffic, its interchanges connected that traffic to local destinations.
In 1969, the Murfreesboro Road/Highway 96 interchange opened. Goose Creek, at about the same time. Then came Moores Lane in 1975. The Saturn Parkway, connecting the new Saturn Plant to employees and suppliers, opened in 1984. The Cool Springs/Galleria exit, of course, came with the mall, in 1991. Next came McEwen and then the recent re-working of Goose Creek. Currently, Spring Hill is lobbying for another interchange off Buckner Road.
And as these interchanges were incrementally added, downtown hotels disappeared, as did the honky-tonks. In their place came the creation of Cool Springs, the growth of Spring Hill following the Saturn Plant, and the growth of Franklin from a population of 11,000 in the 1970s to nearly 70,000 today.
“When I give my lectures, I say that there were two cataclysms that spurred the growth of Franklin,” said Bob Martin, former Franklin Planning Commissioner from 1979 to 2006, when he retired as its director. “The first of course was Saturn. The second was the opening of the Galleria. The day the mall opened the economy of Williamson County literally shifted overnight from Nashville to Franklin.”
Neither could have happened without the conduit of the interstate, said Martin.
If you look at the map of Franklin from when the interstate arrived in the 1960s through today, you see the center of town, literally, through annexations, move east, he said.
With that growth, of course came traffic.
“The Interstate was both the blessing and the curse of Williamson County,” Warwick said.