GROUND WATER IN NORTH-CENTRAL TENNESSEE

GROUND WATEB IN NOKTH-CENTBAL TENNESSEE 131
DAVEDSON COUNTY
[Area, 511 square mites. Population, 222,8641
GENERAL FEATURES
Davidson County, which adjoins Cheatham County on the east,
occupies the east-central part of the region covered by this report.
(See pi. 1.) Its county seat, Nashville (population, 153,866), is also
the capital and second largest city of the State; it is situated on the
Cumberland River about at the geometric center of the county. Old
Hickory (estimated population, 3,050), about 10 miles northeast of
Nashville, is an industrial city devoted to the manufacture of rayon
products. With the exception of these urban districts, the county
is for the most part a fertile rural area.
The greater part of Davidson County is drained by the Cumber­
land River, which follows a meandering westward course through
Nashville and gathers the tributary drainage of Mansker, Whites, and
Little Marrowbone Creeks from the north and of the Stone River
and Mill Creek from the south. The Harpeth River crosses the
extreme southwestern part of the county at Belleview and drains a
small area in the county.
Davidson County embraces approximately equal areas in two
physiographic districts, the northwestern quadrant of the Nashville
Basin (p. 18) and the contiguous encircling escarpment of the
Highland Rim plateau (pp. 16-17). Its extreme topographic relief
is about 525 feet, the highest point being about 900 feet above sea
level on the divide between Sycamore and Mansker Creeks, in the
vicinity of Ridgetop, and the lowest about 375 feet above sea level,
where the Cumberland River crosses the western boundary of the
county. From the meander belt of the Cumberland River as it was
in the Nashville Basin erosion cycle the Highland Rim escarpment
rises northward about 300 feet to the plateau that extends northward
beyond the county. The face of this erosion escarpment is trenched
by closely spaced subparallel youthful drains several miles in length.
The extreme northwestern part of the county, hi the vicinity of Joel-
ton, lies upon the gently undulating peneplain that constitutes the
Highland Rim plateau. A salient of the plateau, now reduced to a
group of mature hills, extends eastward into the county to and beyond
Nashville and forms the divide between the Cumberland and Harpeth
Rivers. The portion of the county that lies south and east of the
escarpment is gently rolling, the product of submature dissection of
the Nashville Basin peneplain by streams adjusted to the Cumber­
land River in its present cycle. The accordant summits peneplain
remnants are about 600 feet above sea level. Sink holes are locally
abundant in the limestones that underlie this physiographic district,
particularly between the limbs of river meanders and in the acute
angle between converging streams in the vicinity of their confluence.