Old Hickory Village

The village housed a workforce that peaked, by one estimate, between 35,000 and 56,000 people. Common laborers lived in a temporary village of more than five hundred residences, with Black workers segregated in one area and about three thousand Mexican workers in forty-one large buildings. Two months after the November 1918 armistice DuPont and the government closed the powder plant, and by the end of 1919 about five hundred people remained. DuPont officials bought it back in 1923 to make rayon, and the company ran Old Hickory as a company town until it began selling homes in 1946.

What the plaque says

Old Hickory Village Old Hickory Village was built on 5,600 acres in 1918, when the DuPont Company signed a contract with the Federal Government to operate and construct the world's largest smokeless powder plant. Mason and Hanger Construction Company built 3,876 buildings to house and service the community that consisted of churches, schools, hospitals, shops, a post office, and a theater. The residents paid rent according to their salary. Homes ranged from bungalows to 10-room, three-story houses. DuPont sold the lots and homes in the 1940s.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Andrew Jackson's Hermitage — 3.3 mi
  Andrew Jackson's cotton plantation east of Nashville, where visitors can walk to the quarters, Alfred's Cabin and the Enslaved Cemetery as well as the mansion.
• Ryman Auditorium — 9.7 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.
• Tennessee State Capitol — 9.7 mi
  William Strickland's Greek Revival capitol on Nashville's Capitol Hill, finished in 1859 and built from the bottom up with the labor of enslaved men.
• National Museum of African American Music — 9.7 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• Madison Adventist Origins — 1.4 mi
• The Hermitage — 3.3 mi
• Free Hill Road — 3.5 mi
• Tulip Grove — 3.6 mi