Ancient people built mounds and nomadic tribes of the Shawnee algonchini settled centuries ago on the high coast of what today is the Cumberland River. Europeans colonized the area for the first time in 1779, calling it Fort Nashborough (the Anglo-Saxon name was Americanization five years later).
The legendary Daniel Boone had the lot and his Wilderness Road (forest road) brought immigrants here from the Appalachians from Virginia, from North Carolina and South and the states of north-east.
Nashville quickly grew as a center of trade and manufacturing, and since 1806 had a status and was named the state capital in 1843. Its strategic location on the banks of the Cumberland River (which connects to the system of navigation of the Mississippi river) and at the intersection of major rail lines made the city a strategic point during the civil war. While the federal troops along the river, the seat of government was moved to Memphis and in less than a week Nashville surrendered.
Another legendary city, Andrew Jackson (who was then Senator), was appointed military governor, allowed the occupation by the loyalists of Nashville, and impose a martial law from 1862 to 1865, a measure that allowed to remain intact. The Confederation sought to reappropriate the city to stop the rail link that supplied the troops of General William Tecumseh Sherman Unionist during the campaign against Atlanta, and the two armies clashed in 1864, the Battle of Nashville south of the city.
The confederate troops under General Thomas Hood was destroyed. The economic recovery after the civil war was hampered by two major epidemics of cholera that killed about a thousand people and forced thousands to flee. The Centennial Exposition of 1897, which was set up the reconstruction of the Parthenon greek still visible today, was the sign of the rebirth of the city. The Maxwell family began here at the renowned firm of Maxwell House Coffee. Teddy Roosevelt himself declared that the coffee served at the Maxwell House Hotel was “good to the last drop.” The estate of Maxwell is now an art gallery and a collection of botanical gardens open to the public. But in the end, Nashville was known for the enormous popularity of his Barn Dance, broadcast live on radio from 1925. T
he city was quickly proclaimed World Capital of Country Music, and along the Music Row, west of the center, became recording studios and companies. In the Sixties students of Fisk University for just blacks indissero manifestations of sit-ins at restaurants Center, encouraged the economic boycott and marched on City Hall to demand the end of segregation. Their non-violent protest was a model and catalyst for the entire civil rights movement in the South in the seventies Entrerprises Gaylord founded the empire of Oprylandia and gave shape to the tourism-based country music with the transfer of the Grand Ole Opry, the renovation of the Ryman Auditorium, the establishment of a ferry service and the overall economic regeneration of the banks of the river towns.
The main economic resources of the city, in addition to the entertainment and tourism, which alone holds more than two million dollars a year, are the medical industry and the automotive industry, represented by the Nissan.
