In the 1850's the Sewanee Coal Company donated
10,000 acres of Cumberland Plateau land to the proposed "University of the South."
The site was chosen and the Sewanee Coal Company offer accepted in large measure
because the location was considered near the center of an area reaching from Virginia
to New Mexico, from Missouri to Florida. The university Founders wanted their
new school to be accessible from all the major areas of the South. The location
was also selected because of the many springs on the tract that would provide
fresh water and because the altitude of the plateau meant that it was largely
free of diseases such as malaria and yellow fever that haunted the low country.
The Founders did not imagine either that the university would have a large endowment or that it could be supported by tuition and fees or by assessments made of the owning dioceses of the Episcopal Church. Instead their vision was that the land itself would be the endowment of the new university, and that leases made of this land to the parents of students, to bishops and dioceses, to priests and eventually alumni, and to like-minded friends would provide the income that would allow for the operation of a great university. In overall plan, this university vision far exceeded the College and Seminary that exists today.
The Founders anticipated the building of a great university modeled not upon Oxford or Cambridge but the then new German universities that would teach all the branches of knowledge including the applied sciences of agriculture, mining, and engineering along with medicine, nursing, law, and theology. In short, the original vision was of a school that would most closely resemble the University of Tennessee or University of Alabama today. To support such a grand venture, the Founders of Sewanee [as the University of the South eventually would be called], laid plans to sub-divide all their land into two to five acre plots and to offer these for lease.
In the early meetings of the Board of Trustees in the 1870's, much discussion was given to hiring a "landscape gardener" or forester whose task it would be to survey roadways, lay off lots, and clear these lots of underbrush and small trees so that they would be attractive to potential lessees. One of these trustees, George Rainsford Fairbanks, whose family homeplace in Sewanee was the guest house, Rebel's Rest, wrote a lengthy report to his fellow trustees reminding them of the original vision of the Founders. It was, he said, to establish a "large, sylvan population" across the entire domain.
If Fairbanks' views were uttered today in Sewanee, they would cause a great stir for Fairbanks and the Founders were espousing a view now anathema among many people in Sewanee and in its alumni community: Fairbanks and the Founders were land developers. They were in the process of laying out the first planned sub-division in Franklin County. These men were not alone in viewing the Cumberland Plateau and the surrounding country as having great potential for development. Similar thoughts quickly led to the establishment of communities at Beersheba, Monteagle, Lookout Mountain, and a dozen other places in the Tennessee and North Carolina high country.
Most of these early communities were not retirement communities but summer communities--as the Monteagle Assembly largely continues to be--which were used by low country "planters" as places of refuge from May until October to escape the devastating diseases that frequently struck New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, and even Memphis. The usual pattern was for servants to arrive ahead of the family and "open" the house. Once the families arrived, their time would be spent in conversation, reading, and in the exchange of social favors at a series of parties that would continue throughout the "season" until frost came in October. The houses would then be closed for the winter and the families would return to their low country houses until late April or May.
These communities were the product of the affluent lifestyle of people who could afford "second houses" and who sought to locate those houses in healthful, pleasant surroundings. Sewanee is different only in that it was viewed as a year-round community and that it existed for educational as well as the customary social purposes. The view of land development that led to the creation of these plateau communities is similar to the motives driving development throughout the same area today. The healthful air, the scenic vistas, and the "sylvan" lifestyle are all marketing tokens of today's realtors.
The significant differences from the nineteenth century is that the pool of potential in-migrants is no longer restricted to the southern low country gentry but has become national in character as people from all across America are discovering the upper South. Grundy, Marion, Franklin, Coffee, Moore, and most nearby counties have seen a transformation of their resident populations in the last two decades. Grundy County, long viewed as stereotypically isolated Appalachian county, has seen a dramatic transformation of its real estate tax base in the last fifteen years. The trend reflected in rising population and in-migrants is not likely to slow or end.
As land changes hand with the deaths of the current seventy to eighty year old farmers, the potential for non-agricultural development increases. The children of these farmers who sought non-farm employment in the midwest in the 1940's and 1950's are now returning to old homeplaces, building retirement houses for themselves, and selling off timber and lots to fund their retirement. In some cases the grand-children of these out-migrants from Appalachia are now returning to reclaim their place on the land and in the South.
The urban scourge of the 1980's and 1990's is not yellow fever or malaria but drugs and drug-related crime. The social deterioration of urban areas drives development much as did the nineteenth century diseases. Combined with urban decay are significant patterns of Sunbelt industrial shift which are also bringing many new people into the upper South. The new managers and skilled employees of Bridgestone, Nissan, Kubota, Saturn, and the other industries of the Tennessee Valley are often transferred into this area from other locations where they were homeowners. They sell their former houses and quickly re-invest their capital in new houses here.
Other people are not re-locating from quite so far away. Many new residents are people who have moved to the country from nearby urban zones such as Chattanooga and Nashville. Commuting from Franklin County to work as far away as Knoxville, Memphis, Birmingham and Atlanta is now not unheard of. Commuting to Chattanooga, Huntsville, and Atlanta is familiar if not common. Second-house development plays a role in this pattern. A large number of people maintain Friday-Sunday houses in Franklin County and "work" residences in other cities. This is particularly true of the affluent professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and brokers. In one subdivision on Tims Ford lake, weekend houses belong to doctors from Nashville, Birmingham, Murfreesboro, Huntsville, and Chattanooga.
This area is remarkably attractive and it's features are not unnoticed. In many ways, according to remarks of in-migrants, the area does not need any marketing but sells itself on sight to people who are tourists or travelers here. There is no reasonable expectation that the pattern of development in this area of the last twenty years will decline; instead there is every reason to believe that this pattern will intensify. While it is difficult to project future populations on the basis of past growth, it is clear that Franklin County is not losing population but has grown in each of the last three decades.
It is also clear that even with "normal" rates of growth--growth generated largely by persons born here--the land of the county is being transformed by residential development. The sixteen county "Convenience Centers" for garbage, fourteen fire departments, and the complexities of maintaining 911 rolls are evidence enough of rural development. Other evidence is seen in the volume of road traffic, in rising sales tax revenues, and in property tax revenues.
Over the next quarter century--through the 2020 census and beyond--the landscape of the county will continue to be transformed from agricultural to residential. Although the county will continue to attract industrial development, major development will most likely be residential and not industrial. In 2020 Franklin County will look much as it does today--only moreso and everywhere. That is, we will see residential development continue to insinuate itself into the field, coves, and forests of the entire county. Properties like Sewanee Summit and Clifftops or Franklin Hills may increase in number, but unplanned developments are likely to comprise the bulk of county development.
Unplanned development is unit-by-unit development that is generally unregulated by the kinds of planning and restrictions that apply when a multi-residence subdivision is created all at once. There are multiple zoning, regulatory, and covenantal restrictions that apply in a development like Franklin Hills. Very few of these regulations apply when someone buys three acres from the non-resident daughter of a deceased farmer and build a house on the property. It is unplanned development that is hardest to control and which will result in the greatest transformation of land in the county.
Unplanned development fragments wildlife habitat, agricultural land, and largely negates our capacity to comprehensively manage areas as ecosystems or watersheds. The fragmentation of farmland is considered by many observers to be a more important factor than market conditions in the decline of farming. Unfortunately the demographic and economic forces which favor unplanned development are well-established. Lacking political coherence or an existing comprehensive development strategy, the county will find it difficult to regulate this kind of growth or to mitigate its impact on the natural systems of the land and water.
Franklin County will see more not less unplanned development; it will see increased fragmentation of its farmlands; and it will see the continuing residential domestication of its landscape. Despite the efforts of "rational" or systems oriented planners who use logical or statistical models developed elsewhere to tell local people what they should do, planning agendas are always vulnerable to free-enterprise. It is unlikely that the fundamental property rights of ownership, inheritance, and transfer of property are going to be either rescinded or abridged in America without what will amount to a second American Revolution.
In a national context where we are seeing not only court challenges but sometimes violent local resistance to imposed federal regulations on land use, the prospect for controlled development is poor. The real gains in protecting habitat, in safeguarding watersheds, and in preserving farmland may come from ad hoc coalitions of business, government and conservancy groups who pool efforts and resources to protect critical areas. A recent good example of this kind of conservation is Bluebell Island in the upper Elk River. In order for strategies of ad hoc coalitions to be effective, conservationists and the interested public must inventory critical areas and establish an agenda for the acquisition and preservation of these areas.