Beech Bluff, Tennessee

Beech Bluff is an unincorporated community on the east-central edge of Madison County, Tennessee, United States.[1] The area ZIP code is 38313.[2]

Beech Bluff, Tennessee
Unincorporated community
Beech Bluff post office, 2019
Beech Bluff, Tennessee Beech Bluff, Tennessee
Coordinates: 35°35′47″N 88°37′53″W
Country	United States
State	Tennessee
County	Madison
Elevation	384 ft (117 m)
Time zone	UTC-6 (Central (CST))
• Summer (DST)	UTC-5 (CDT)
ZIP code	38313
Area code(s)	731
GNIS feature ID	1305050[1]

History

In 1852, a post office was established at Beech Bluff,[3] which was then also known as Homer[lower-alpha 1] and used as a summer resort.[4] After a section of the Tennessee Midland Railway was built through the area between 1888 and 1890, the name of the community was officially settled,[5] deriving its appellation from a large grove of native beech trees near a local bluff.[6] By 1897, the population had grown to approximately three hundred.[7] The community was historically home to a high school, which later became a grade school called Beech Bluff Elementary[8] before it was converted into a recreation center in 2016.[9]

Geography

Beech Bluff is built on deposits of loess which have developed brown or grayish brown silt loam soils. These are mapped as Grenada, Memphis or Lexington series where drainage is good, and Calloway in somewhat poorly drained areas.[10]

References

Notes

1. It appears that the community was, in its early years, dually known as Homer and Beech Bluff. Higgins and Parish's Madison County has it that the community was known as Homer until the construction of the railroad, and Miller's Tennessee Place-names would seem to confirm this, but A New and Complete Gazetteer of the United States, published in 1854, nevertheless identifies a Beech Bluff post office in Madison County. The likely conclusion is that both names existed in the community's early years, with Homer being the more prevalent one, but the railway station sealed the official name as Beech Bluff upon its completion.

Citations

1. "Beech Bluff, Tennessee". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey.
2. United States Postal Service. "USPS—Look Up a ZIP Code". Retrieved 15 February 2012.
3. "Post Offices". Jim Forte Postal History. Archived from the original on 8 February 2015. Retrieved 7 February 2015.
4. Williams, Emma Inman (1946). Historic Madison. Madison County Historical Society. p. 347.
5. Higgins, Linda J.; Parish, Scott (2009). Madison County. Arcadia Publishing. p. 24. ISBN 0-738-56779-5.
6. Ridpath, John Clark (1897). The Standard American Encyclopedia of Arts, Sciences, History, Biography, Geography, Statistics, and General Knowledge, Volume 8. Encyclopedia Publishing Company. p. 3132.
7. Miller, Larry L. (2001). Tennessee Place-names. Indiana University Press. p. 15. ISBN 0-253-21478-5.
8. CIC's School Directory. Curriculum Information Center. 1990. p. 347.
9. "Beech Bluff Recreation Center survives push from some Madison County Commissioners to close". The Jackson Sun. 21 May 2020. Retrieved 9 July 2020.
10. Natural Resources Conservation Service. "SoilWeb". Retrieved 9 February 2017.