For the past two-and-a-half years, once a month, reporter and resident historian J.R. Lind has picked an area in the city to examine while accompanied by a photographer. With his column Walk a Mile, he walked a one-mile stretch of that area, exploring the neighborhood’s history and character, its developments, its current homes and businesses, and what makes it a unique part of Nashville. This is his final installment.

The Route: From The Loveless Cafe, east on Highway 100, then right on Pasquo Road to the bridge marking the county line.

Thirty-two months ago, we tried to find a beginning : “The charge — to rediscover the city one mile at a time — is a daunting one. At its genesis is an important question: Where to begin?” The charge remained daunting, and it ends with an equally important question: Where is the final mile?

Subtrapezoidal and bordering neither an ocean nor another state, Davidson County doesn’t lend itself to an easy answer to the question. Even its major river slices the county in half rather than serving as its border. Entering the county as Old Hickory Lake, the Cumberland weaves and bends, leaving us (technically, as Cheatham Lake) in a quiet and bucolic part of the county that’s home to little more than very impressive riverside houses.

Maybe the answer is in age. Though borders may seem as fixed as granite, county boundaries in Tennessee change every so often. Sometimes it’s practical. Years ago, residents of a new subdivision were shocked to receive truancy notices from Metro Nashville Public Schools, because they thought they lived in Wilson County; one family found out the county line went right through their house, putting one child’s bedroom in Metro and the other in Wilson County.

Surveyors are imperfect humans just like the rest of us. There have been cases where damming of the river left farms formerly easily connected to their county cut off and a long way from police and fire services. Mostly the changes happen for the ease of the taxpayer — someone’s back 40 is across the line, and they are tired of paying two property tax bills. Generally, of course, they ask to move all their property into the lower tax jurisdiction, which means Davidson County loses more than it gains. The last addition to Davidson County is the back few acres of a farm in Cane Ridge. Not an easy walk.

Deciding the “end” of a place like Davidson County is more art than science, and well, your mileage may vary. But one answer is the junction of State Route 100 (or as nearly everyone who isn’t a state transportation bureaucrat calls it, Highway 100, or for those of a certain age, “Hundred Highway”) and the Natchez Trace Parkway.

Highway 100 was originally the Harding Pike, running from Cockrill Spring in what is now Centennial Park to the actual Natchez Trace. (The parkway generally follows the old Nashville-to-Natchez, Miss., road, but the original trace had many branches, particularly near its termini.)

When the state got it together to build the first state route — the Memphis-Bristol Highway, now U.S. Highway 70 for most of its route — there was a local push to use the Harding Pike’s routing all the way from Nashville to Memphis. And indeed, part of it was taken over through western Davidson County (thus: 70 is Harding Pike through Belle Meade and West Nashville), but the state opted for a slightly different path west of town. Thus, the infamous 70/100 split between Belle Meade and Bellevue.

The Natchez Trace — and its current Department of the Interior-managed successor — is symbolic too. It was the first road people took out of Nashville when it was time for them to find new adventures in the West. (Granted, the West was “central Mississippi” at the time.) Highway 100 is busy in both directions on a sticky August morning; shockingly, though, the most famous business in these parts is not.

It’s a light crowd for breakfast at The Loveless Cafe. In 1951, Lon and Anne Loveless purchased the property — originally the Harpeth Valley Tea Room — built 14 motel rooms, renamed it the Loveless Motel and Cafe and served fried chicken on their front porch to pre-interstate travelers. Popularity came, and the Lovelesses converted their home into a proper restaurant and offered a broader menu (including, yes, those famed biscuits). The couple whose name is synonymous with the place owned it for only eight years, though in the ensuing decades, it has remained mostly a family-owned operation. (Granted, the family now is health care gazillionaire Chuck Eclan and his wife Patricia Frist, whose maiden name may ring a bell.) The beautiful neon sign still advertises the place as a motel, but passers-by looking for a room are 37 years too late.

There are no sidewalks on Highway 100, which maybe shouldn’t be a shock. But there is a bike lane, which shouldn’t be a shock either, given that the Natchez Trace is popular among the two-wheel set. The bike lane is perilously close to what could be called the road’s shoulder by only the most generous observer: the edge of the road precipitously hangs over a deep drainage ditch. Swarms of minnows provide proof this ditch connects with some Harpeth River tributary rather close by.

East of Loveless, great homes with beautiful yards face 100, the land slightly undulating as the creek — officially, Stonemeade Stream — crisscrosses them. Old scraggly trees hug the banks, and hefty oaks and walnuts stretch skyward.  

Those in the know call this part of the county Pasquo. It’s a rare place name in that it’s the only one on earth. (Tullahoma, famously, is also the only Tullahoma on the planet.) Pasquo got its name from the home county of its original settlers: Pasquotank, N.C. The group that came from the mother state settled in two little villages: Pasquo and, yes, Tank. Tank has long since been forgotten and absorbed into Bellevue (it was roughly the area south of Highway 100 and east of Temple Road), but Pasquo lives on. The Pasquo Church of Christ sits, appropriately enough, at the intersection of 100 and Pasquo Road. 

The congregation began as a tent meeting on the north side of the highway in the early 20th century before settling into its current simple brick structure in the 1940s. There’s a small, well-appointed cemetery and a wide-open churchyard with the standard playground and a rustic wooden shelter for outdoor preaching.

Behind some roadside overgrowth on Pasquo Road, a surprising discovery: a secret sidewalk. A nice, wide strip of asphalt well away from the road that, yes, was probably built to accommodate the massive condo project going up on the hill south of the church.

No, even here, even in this still largely rural, big-lot, open-acreage part of the county, it’s impossible to escape condominiums.

Across from this undertaking, though, a fallow field (maybe it’s just unkempt) shudders with a pleasant north breeze that’s doing the Lord’s work in keeping the August humidity at bay. A creekbed runs below the secret sidewalk. It’s not exactly dry, but it’s not running water either. Let’s call it moist. Critters hop through, though, so the watercourse is doing its duty as a wetland nonetheless.

The sidewalk, such as it is, ends at a funky little cabin that looks a lot like the group lodging option at your state park of choice. A bulldozer is ominously behind it, and from the street, the uncovered windows provide a view of what’s inside: not much.

And then there’s a roundabout. Roundabouts are great. There should be more of them. They facilitate traffic moving consistently, and simultaneously slow that traffic down. The city could use more in its most crowded spaces, so naturally there is a great one out here in a very uncrowded space. Or at least uncrowded for now. A huge subdivision lies just beyond the roundabout, with plenty of homes up and occupied already and plenty more under construction.

Stephens Valley Church sprawls beside the road as it edges closer to the county line. A few legacy homes sit stubbornly on their big unsubdivided lots, thumbing their noses.

There’s an obvious break between a smaller subdivision and a much larger one (with much larger houses). The grass is unmowed, there are no stub roads indicating future construction.

And the creek tells the story. 

A small bridge takes Pasquo Road over Trace Creek, and on the edge of the road there’s a small stake with a blue top.

It’s the county line. The big houses south of the creek are in Williamson County.

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