GROUND WATER IN NORTH-CENTRAL TENNESSEE

140 GROUND WATER IN NORTH-CENTRAL TENNESSEE
DICKSON COUNTY
GENERAL FEATURES
[Area, 549 square mites. Population, 18,4911
Dickson County lies in the southwestern part of the region covered
by this report (pi. 1) and is bounded on the north by Montgomery
County, on the east by Cheatham and Williamson Counties, on the
south by Hickman County, and on the west by Humphreys and
Houston Counties. The county seat, Charlotte, is a town of 291
inhabitants approximately -ac the center of the county. The chief
commercial center, however, is Dickson (population 2,902), which is
on the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway in the south-
central part of the county. The county is wholly rural.
Dickson County lies entirely within the-Highland Rim plateau
(pp. 16-18), and is drained for the most part by the Cumberland and
Harpeth Rivers, which constitute parts of its northern and eastern
boundaries. A small area in the southwestern part of the county,
however, is drained by the Piney and Duck Rivers into the Tennessee
River. In general, the county is a dissected plain, the summits of the
main ridges being remnants of the Highland Rim plateau and having
the slightly undulating surface characteristic of it. The most exten­
sive plateau remnants occur in the southwestern quadrant of the
county along the divide between the Cumberland and Tennessee
Rivers. The stream valleys have mature profiles near their heads and
youthful profiles in their lower reaches; the mature profiles of dissec­
tion are adjusted to the Nashville Basin stage of the Cumberland
River (pp. 20-22), and the youthful profiles are correlative with the
present stage of downcutting by the river. The largest of these
streams are Turnbull, Jones, Barton, and Yellow Creeks, which are
tributaries of the Cumberland and Harpeth Rivers, and Piney River
and its tributary, Garner Creek. The surface relief of the county is
about 550 feet. The highest points, which are on the Highland Rim
plateau in the southwestern part of the county, are about 900 feet
above sea level; the lowest points, about 350 feet above sea level, are
on the Cumberland River at the northeast corner of the county.
Dickson County lies on the western flank of the Nashville dome
(pp. 62-63), so that in general the rock strata constitute a monocline
dipping slightly westward or northwestward. This regional structure
is modified, however, by a superposed dome whose apex is in the vicin­
ity of White Bluff, in the central-eastern part of the county (p. 65),
and probably by other secondary folds.
The rocks that crop out in Dickson County range in age from Upper
Cretaceous to the Chattanooga shale (Mississippian or Upper De­
vonian). The youngest stratigraphic unit is the Tuscaloosa forma­
tion, a coastal-plain gravel deposit that covers several square miles of