History Corner

As infrastructure improved, Middle Tennessee ferries disappeared as a means of transport

BY RIDLEY WILLS II

I have had a life-long interest in Tennessee rivers and ferries. When Tennessee became a state in 1796 , every river, large and small, had a ferry. Early Tennessee immigrants used Clark’s Ferry to cross the Clinch River at Southwest Point. Travellers on the Natchez Trace crossed the Duck River on Gordon’s Ferry. As roads and infrastructure improved, ferries began to disappear and today there are only two operating in the state, both in Middle Tennessee. Here are some of my favorite Cumberland River ferries.

Cumberland City Ferry

In 1997, F. H. “Dock” Turnbull, a licensed ferry boat pilot, told Tony Holmes, of Friendsville, Tenn., that the Cumberland City Ferry “had experienced only five days downtime during the past seven years.” The ferry, which still operates today, is owned by the Tennessee Department of Transportation and was operated in 1997 by Two Rivers Excursions, Inc. in nearby Clarksville. In 1997, it operated seven days a week from 5:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends. Vehicles registered in Stewart, Houston and Montgomery Counties could cross all day for 75 cents and all other vehicles could cross for a dollar. The ferry, which can carry four large cars, connects the village of Cumberland City on the south side of the river with Indian Mound and Woodlawn to the north of the river. It can carry about 100 automobiles a day. Each crossing takes about five to 10 minutes.

Clees Ferry

William “Bud” Hulan moved to Davidson Country from North Carolina before the Civil War. A sawmill operator and carpenter in the Bell’s Bend area, he ran a raft ferry across the Cumberland. It was a crude affair, operated manually. Hulan pulled it across on a cable that stretched from one bank to the other.

In the late 1860s, six Clees brothers moved to Bell’s Bend after living for several years in Mount Starling, Ohio, with their widowed mother. They arrived in Davidson County collectively with $30,000, a large sum in those days. On Feb. 3, 1869, the Clees brothers purchased 1,626 acres in Bell’s Bend. The brothers long wanted to build a better ferry across the river than the raft ferry Nolan operated. They had first to acquire a strip of land on the west side of the river that stretched from the riverbank to Charlotte Pike. They accomplished this in 1881 by purchasing a small wide strip of land from the Shelton family. With this done, they acquired a packet boat, which they named the Mary Clees, which they used as a ferry from 1877 until late 1882 when it was dismantled. That year, the Clees family moved to Pennington Bend, where they went into the soap business.

After the Clees left, the Edgefield operated at Bell’s Bend. In 1906, it or another boat was converted to a gas-powered ferry boat which could carry three cars. During the 1970s and 1980s, I periodically took my sons to ride the Clees Ferry across the Cumberland. It was fun.

When the Briley Parkway Bridge over the Cumberland opened in 1991, the nearby Pennington Bend Ferry closed and the Judge Hickman moved downstream to operate at Clees Ferry. It could carry eight automobiles and served an important function into the 1990s. Today, Clees Ferry Road on the west side of the River is called Old Hickory Boulevard. Although the ferry is gone, there is a small parking area there that has a beautiful view of the Cumberand

Hydes Ferry

Across the Cumberland from the Beal Bosley Place in North Nashville were the homes of the Hyde brothers, Richard and Tazwell, “both clever, rich men.” In the early 1840s, the Hydes established a ferry across the river. The ferry was a small, flat boat pulled on a wire by hand. Later, Richard Hyde built a larger ferry boat that carried his name. The Hydes Ferry was where the former Tennessee Central Railroad bridge is today, less than a mile downstream from the Clarksville Highway Bridge across the Cumberland.

Williamson Ferry

The Williamson family were large landowners who operated a ferry for years at McGavock Pike, beginning in 1933. Capable of carrying three cars at a time, it was named the Edgefield for the area west of the river which it serviced. David Lever was one of the first ferrymen who operated the Williamson Ferry. The Edgefield was replaced by the Judge Hickman, built in 1952 or 1953. It could carry a total of eight cars at a time. When the Pennington Bend Bridge was completed on Briley Parkway on Nov. 3, 1965, the Judge Hickman was moved downstream to the Clees Ferry site in Bell’s Bend. It operated there until 1991 when a construction of a bridge upstream made it obsolete.

Pennington’s Ferry

This was the first ferry in Pennington Bend. It was only a raft that was propelled across the river by the ferryman pulling on a rope. The ferry was located in the northwest part of the bend opposite Haysboro at a place that was shallow enough that a wagon could be driven across the river in dry weather. Pennington’s Ferry was privately owned and not generally used by the public. It was frequented by several families who lived close to the river in today’s Madison. They used it to go to the one-room Methodist Church in the bend. The Craigheads and Donelsons were among the families known to have travelled to the church by this ferry.

Woods Ferry

Matthew Rhea’s 1832 map of Tennessee showed at least nine ferries across the Cumberland River in Sumner County. The best known of the Sumner County ferries was Wood’s Ferry, south of Gallatin.

Rome Ferry

Rome was a small town in Smith County, situated at the mouth of Round Lick Creek, on the left bank of the Cumberland, eight miles west of Carthage. In 1832, it contained about 200 inhabitants, five stores, two taverns, one grocery, two tailor’s shops, two carpenters, one blacksmith shop, one sadler’s shop, one stone mason, one cabinet shop, one shoemaker’s shop, two warehouses and one doctor.

When Rome was a thriving town, it also had a ferry across the Cumberland River on what became Highway 70. The ferry continued to operate until 1992 when its last pilot died. Recently, while driving through Smith County, historian Bill Kerry did a double take. He pulled over, turned the car around and went back to see if he had imagined what he had seen. “Sure enough, it was an old rusty ferry parked on the south bank of the Cumberland River.”