Tennesse's 10th largest city. Located in Sumner county, bordering Nashville to the SouthWest and 26 miles of Old Hickory lake (Cumberland river) on the South.

It is the home of several music stars, among them Johnny Cash and William Lee Golden of the Oak Ridge Boys. Formerly home to Roy Orbison.

There are 4 marinas on the lake as well as several parks including one at the Old Hickory Lock, Dam & Hydrogeneration.

To the North you will find a rolling to hilly landscape with long country roads that are great for biking or just a nice drive.

Hendersonville, Tennessee
Population: 40,620 (2000 Census)
Area: 32 square miles
Lat: 36.3152 Lon: -86.6079
Zipcode: 37075
Areacode: 615 - Exchanges: 264, 822, 824

A short historical timeline of the city:

1771  Thomas Spencer built cabins in Hendersonville
1790  William Henderson settled in area
           Henderson was Revolutionary War hero
           City named after him
           Andrew Jackson purchased one of first lots in new city
1792  Bradford-Berry house built
1794  Indian ward ended
1798  Rock Castle completed by Daniel Smith
           Smith began work as surveyor 1770
           Married Sarah Michie 1773
           Rock Castle first rock house built in Tennessee
1798  Beech Cumberland Presbyterian Church organized by Thomas Craighead
           Log church built 1813
           Stone building erected by William Montgomery 1828
1800  Road from Nashville to Gallatin completed
1801  William Henderson became first postmaster
1824  First United Methodist Church built
1859  L&N Railroad opened Nashville-Bowling Green route through Hendersonville
1866  Hendersonville population was 36
1885  Hendersonville had four stores and some churches
1951  Work began on Old Hickory Dam as part of the Tennessee Valley Authority's expanding project to provide electrical power to the greater mid-south United States.
           Old Hickory Lake has 26 miles of shoreline in Hendersonville
           Dam completed June 1954
1963  In keeping with President Eisenhower's Sister-City Program, Tsuru, Japan became Hendersonville’s "Sister City"
1968  Hendersonville incorporated and recognized as a sovereign municipality.

Square Miles: 34
Miles of city streets: 310 (as of 1990- considerable amounts of construction have been done since then)

Population:
1980  18,000
1990  32,000
2000  40,000 (est.)

Elevation: 846 feet above sea-level

Sister Cities within the US: Hendersonville, NC and Hendersonville, PA.


I first moved to Hendersonville in 1980, when I was seven years old. At that time, the town, despite its 17,000+ population, was mostly farmland and fairly small. Point in fact, the city wasn't even shown on some of the maps in those days. But as time went on, that would change. Hendersonville seemed destined to grow quickly while I lived there. In the short span of just ten years I saw strip-malls, department stores and brand new high schools practically erupt within the city's limits. With all the new additions to the city's landscape came, also, more people. The population, which had at first seemed quaint by comparison to San Diego (which is where I had moved from), almost literally doubled in those first ten years, seemingly right in front of my eyes.

Whole new living communities popped up out of nowhere and new faces flooded every nook and cranny of the town. The police force grew and commerce sky-rocketed. What had once been a sleepy Tennessee town was quickly becoming a hard-and-fast suburb of Nashville, which is some thirty or forty miles away. Hendersonville, in true pioneering and intrepid fashion, took on the challenge of the unexpected population boom and continues, to this very day, to expand and grow by leaps and bounds.

I lived in that city for the majority of my life and have seen it change drastically over the years. It's a little strange to drive by some places and remember, clearly, that I used to ride my dirt bike through the land those buildings now sit on, racing through trees and animal trails on my Huffy. Stranger still is when I drive through the town, after having been gone for a few months, and find that a building or business which had been there since my childhood has not only been closed, but replaced by something completely different or even grazed to the ground. Despite all of the changes, though, this city has still managed to somehow retain its small-town mentality and atmosphere. People are still as friendly as they ever were and there is a very palpable sense of innocence which continues to linger in its rolling hills.

Old Hickory Lake and Drakes Creek Park offer families some quiet and expansive acreage in which children can play in a relatively care-free area. Boating, fishing, skiing and even hunting are widely practiced year-round, weather permitting. One of the most refreshing things about this city is the greenery it offers. Trees everywhere. Grass, flowers of all types and proud oak trees litter the entire city and continue to thrive, for they are considered to be part of the town's charm and natural treasures. Plenty of shade down every street to ride a bike or simply sit down beneath a tree with an apple in your palm, your legs kicked back and idle fancies of floating down the Cumberland River, like some sort of modern-day Huckleberry Finn, floating through your mind as dogs bark in the distance and lawn mowers consume grass by the metric ton.

It's an idyllic and sleepy little town which is slowly, steadily, growing into maturity as a full-fledged city. I may have been born in West Hollywood, but Hendersonville, Tennessee will always be my home town.

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