Wartrace

Wartrace boomed on the railroad and then on horses. At its height the town had six inns and hotels and served thirteen trains a day. The Wartrace Horse Show has run since 1906, and the town calls itself the cradle of the Tennessee Walking Horse. In the war it was General William Hardee's winter headquarters after Stones River, and Confederate officers gathered at the Old Chockley Tavern during the Tullahoma Campaign. A short line, the Walking Horse and Eastern, still links the town to Shelbyville, and the downtown is a National Register historic district.

What the plaque says

Wartrace In 1850, Rice Coffey gave eight acres to the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad on which the main line would run with a depot and freight house at the junction of the branch line to Shelbyville. In 1851, town lots were laid off. The following year, a post office was established. In 1853, the town was incorporated as Wartrace Depot after Wartrace Creek. Twenty years later, the name was changed to Wartrace after Wartrace Creek, which was named for the War Trace, a buffalo path used by Indians at war with Nashville settlers in the 1790's.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration — 6.8 mi
  The Shelbyville show grounds where the Tennessee Walking Horse has been crowned world grand champion each late summer since 1939, and where the practice of soring is part of the story.
• Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park — 13 mi
  A 2,000-year-old enclosure of piled stone and earth on the bluffs above the forks of the Duck River, built by Native people between about 80 and 550 A.D., with a museum and waterfall trails.
• Jack Daniel Distillery — 17 mi
  The oldest registered distillery in the United States, in a limestone hollow outside Lynchburg, where the tour now names Nathan Nearest Green, an enslaved man, as the first master distiller.
• Henry Horton State Park — 21 mi
  A Duck River park on Governor Henry Horton's former farm in Marshall County, with a mill ruin from 1845, kayak floats and the grave of a governor the House declined to impeach.

More markers nearby

• The Webb School — 4.4 mi
• Prentice Cooper — 7.3 mi
• Henry Brevard Davidson — 7.6 mi
• Henry Watterson — 8.8 mi