Patterson Forge

The forge took its name from Bell's mother, Mary Patterson, whose family also spelled it Pattison. To power it he had a tunnel about a hundred yards long cut through a narrow limestone and sandstone ridge at the Narrows, giving the water a four-foot fall. Bell made the Narrows his headquarters, built a house there called Bell View, and housed workers in a community still called Bell Town. After the Panic of 1819 he advertised the property for sale, and floods and looting took much of the site. The tunnel remains and belongs to the state park system.

What the plaque says

Patterson Forge 4.1 mi. northwest, at The Narrows, Montgomery Bell, pioneer industrialist, ironmaster, philanthropist and turfman, built a forge in 1818. Power was obtained by tunneling water through the hill at the top of the Narrows to a point below it where the river returns after making a 7-mile horseshoe bend.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fisk University and Jubilee Hall — 17 mi
  The 1866 school for freed people whose Jubilee Singers paid for Jubilee Hall, a National Historic Landmark, and whose students helped start Nashville's sit-ins.
• Tennessee State Capitol — 18 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.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 18 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• National Museum of African American Music — 18 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

• Montgomery Bell — steps away
• Mound Bottom — 0.9 mi
• Connection To Johnsonville — 1.9 mi
• Smith Farmhouse — 8.9 mi