|
Bell Buckle, located 18 miles southeast
of Murfreesboro in northern Bedford County, is one of
the many towns in middle Tennessee created by the
railroad. As the Nashville and Chattanooga came down
through the Fosterville gap on its way to connect the
Tennessee capital with Atlanta and points east, A. D.
Fugitt, a local landowner, established the town site in
order to make a whistle stop along this new and speedier
route between the interior of the trans-Appalachian
south and the Atlantic. Bell Buckle was the result:
a typical small railroad town combining local
manufacturing and commercial services with the refined
living (schools and well-appointed homes) characteristic
of mid to late nineteenth-century America. A brick
railroad depot was built in 1862, while, after the war,
Bell Buckle featured a large creamery and a small
factory for shovel making. Most importantly, the Webb
School moved from Maury County. Built in 1886 by
local businessmen and operated by Sawney Webb, a
Confederate veteran, the school remains today a major
private academy in middle Tennessee.
During the Tullahoma Campaign, the town
played a major role in the Liberty Gap engagement, for
Liddell’s brigade of Cleburne’s division (originally
stationed in the town) took a position near here after
units of the Federal army drove him out of the pass. It
is also from this same position that this brigade formed
for an attack against Federal troops holding the gap on
25 June 1863. In early June of 1863, the Army of
Tennessee held a review in the streets of Bell Buckle.
Aside from the railroad running on the
original bed, there are few structures from the period
around the war that remain in the Bell Buckle area. The
town does, however, have an Historic District
designation for the business strip fronting the
railroad. These structures were built primarily in the
late 19th and early 20th century.
Historic Resources:
Site of Railroad Depot
– The depot no longer stands. However, on the site now
sits a restored caboose from the early 20th
century that Bell Buckle uses are a symbol of its
railroad-related past.
|
