Cedars of Lebanon State Park - History

History

The earliest Euro-American settlers arrived in Wilson County in the late 1790s. The city of Lebanon, established in 1802, was named after the abundance of red cedar in the area. The settlers believed (mistakenly) that the red cedar stands were similar to the cedar forests of ancient Lebanon, which were harvested by Phoenician city-states and used in the construction of the Temple of Solomon. The first Wilson County courthouse and many other early structures in the county were constructed using red cedar logs.

For much of the 19th century, the barren glades were largely devoid of human habitation, with the exception of a few small farms. In an 1879 essay on the history of Wilson County, James Drake described the various soil types in the county, which included a "dark soil, peculiar to the cedar flats, the least desirable of any we have, and subject to drought, being usually near the rock." The town of Gladeville was established in 1852 just west of the modern state forest boundaries and grew into a sizeable hamlet until the outbreak of the American Civil War.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the high demand for lumber led to the harvesting of most of the forests in the Central Basin. Red cedar in particular was popular for use in the making of furniture, fence rails, and pencils. In the cedar flats of Wilson County, small farmers were struggling with depletion of the already-thin soil layer caused by poor farming tactics. In 1935, as part of the New Deal, the federal government initiated a plan to resettle farmers living in badly eroded lands to allow the devastated forests to recover. As part of the Lebanon Cedar Forest Project, the federal Resettlement Administration helped move the farmers in the cedar flats to new locations, and the Works Project Administration constructed forestry and recreational facilities and planted thousands of red cedar seedlings. The work was supervised by the United States Forestry Service. "Lebanon Cedar Forest" officially opened in 1937, with local newspaper editor Dixon Merritt presiding over the opening ceremony. Although the land was managed by the Tennessee Department of Conservation, the federal government retained ownership until 1955.

Botanists began noting the ecological importance of the cedar glades as early as 1901, when German-born doctor Augustin Gattinger (1825–1903) mentioned the glades in his book The Flora of Tennessee and the Philosophy of Botany. Research conducted by Elsie Quarterman of Vanderbilt University led to the forest's designation as a national natural landmark in 1973. In 1995, Cedar Lodge and several other structures built by the WPA in the 1930s and 1940s were placed on the National Register of Historic Places.