April 25, 2021
The Talley train heads north. Winds calmed during the night. From Lake City we cross the Cumberland River below Barkley Dam, and pick up I-24 to Clarksville, TN (population 160,000).
Founders named Clarksville after General George Rogers Clark, frontier fighter and Revolutionary War hero. The “frontier fighter” part means his job was to get rid of those pesky Indians. General Clark’s brother was none other than William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Pretty good stock. Adventurous people for sure.
Indigenous Peoples
Speaking of Indians, “Paleo-Indians” first settled what is now Tennessee 11,000 years ago. Then came Europeans. Hernando de Soto traveled through in 1539−43 and “discovered” the Muscogee and Yuchi people. Expanding European settlement in what is now Virginia forced the Cherokee people to move south into Tennessee. More Europeans came, bringing the usual diseases Europeans. Those reduced native tribe numbers significantly. But deadly disease alone was not enough to rid colonists of the Indians.
The nascent U. S. government forcibly displaced the remaining wretched souls to the south and west, including all Muscogee and Yuchi peoples, the Chickasaw, and Choctaw. In 1838 and 1839, the government force marched nearly 17,000 Cherokees from “emigration depots” in Eastern Tennessee to Indian Territory west of Arkansas. This “Trail of Tears” march killed 4,000 Cherokees. The farther one digs into indigenous people’s history in America, the sadder the tale gets.
Clarksville Today
Austin Peay State University is in Clarksville. The Leaf-Chronicle, Tennessee’s oldest newspaper is there.
The 36,739 acre United States Army military post Fort Campbell, home of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), is also here. Its big, but not that big. Thirty-six of the 420 military installations in American are bigger. The first place prize goes to the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico at 3,542,862 acres. I suppose one need lots of land to practice missile launching. Fort Bliss in Texas get the second place prize at 1,332,807 acres. “Bliss”, certainly is an ironic name for an army fort.
Actually in January 1854 the US Congress named Fort Bliss after Col. William Wallace Smith Bliss.
Bliss died of yellow fever Aug. 5, 1853, at the age of 39. The Army buried him in in New Orleans. Years later they decided to dig him up and move his remains to the post named in his honor. But, and I promise I am not making this up, they discovered his casket was not where it was supposed to be.
How the hell do you lose a dead army Colonel’s casket? It took almost five years to find him. He now resides at Fort Bliss in El Paso. Or does he? One never knows.
Nashville
From Clarksville we travel eastward on I-24 to gain I-40 at Nashville, TN. There is always live music going on in honky-tonk bars in downtown Nashville. Visitors pack the Johnny Cash Museum and celebrate his life and times. Nashville’s population is 695,000. That includes 694,950 Johnny Cash fans. The Nashville City Council is considering a resolution to have the 50 dissenters tared, feathered and run out of town.
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and home to Vanderbilt University. But the real deal is the “Grand Ole Opry” Stage and Radio Show that has continuously run since 1943. “You ain’t nobody in Nashville unless you have played the Opry.”
Cookeville and Beyond
We scurry on to Cookeville, TN (population 34,000). Cookeville sits on a long ridge of the Highland Rim and Cumberland Plateau, an area of world-class karst. That means the region is laced with caves. Scientists at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville spend a lot of time underground studying the extensive cave systems.
On we go to Monterey (population 3,000) then Crossville (population 11,000). Next comes the unincorporated village of Grandview, sitting on the eastern edge of the Cumberland Plateau. The plateau is a mountainous region in Tennessee with many spectacular sandstone cliffs, gorges, natural bridges, and waterfalls. Lots of whitewater for you kayakers.
Watts Bar Nuclear Generating Station
Spring City is next in line (population 1,900). The town is located along Tennessee Valley Authority created Watts Bar Lake. The Watts Bar Nuclear Generating Station is nearby. Two nuclear reactors at the facility generate electric power for about 1,200,000 households in the Tennessee Valley. Both units are the newest operating civilian reactors to come online in the United States lately.
Tritium
In September 2002 the facility started producing tritium for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Tritium naturally decays to emit ionizing radiation. Scientists tell us exposure to that radiation may very slightly increase a person’s chance to develop cancer during his or her lifetime.
Tritium is used in watches, instruments and tools, and even novelty items like self-illuminating key chains. It is used in medicine as a radioactive tracer. It is also used as a nuclear fusion fuel in tokamak reactors and in hydrogen bombs.
You can bet your sweet bippy that the National Nuclear Security Administration ain’t making watches with this stuff.
Emergency Planning Zones
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants. One is a 10 miles zone where people could potentially inhale airborne radioactive contamination. The other is a 50 mile zone in which people could ingest contaminated food and liquid.
This explains why many people in Spring City have 3 ears.
Earthquakes
You gotta love the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They estimate the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the Watts Bar reactors is 1 in 27,778. That is better odds than winning the Mega Millions lottery.
On December 12, 2018 at 4:14 AM an earthquake occurred two miles east of the site. The TVA told the public that the Watts Bar facilities are designed to withstand seismic events and were not impacted by the earthquake, but personnel would conduct further inspections just to make sure. Well good on them!
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Finally our day ends on Jackson Island, where we camp on the shore of Watts Bar Lake. Very pleasant, quiet. Nice three-eared people.
There are lots of two-headed ducks on the lake. I think I am growing an extra ear. Weird.
Good night all.
Tomorrow on the Asheville, NC.