Remembering historic railroads: The Memphis, Clarksville and Louisville

Historic railroads are worth remembering; listen to a live version of 'Talking MCL.'

CLARKSVILLE, Tennessee — The Middle Tennessee community of Clarksville was once a bustling transportation hub.

It wasn’t just the riverboats plying the Cumberland River that made this region important. Railroads also proved essential to the farmers growing tobacco in the region. The Memphis, Clarksville and Louisville Railroad was the first railroad to pass through Clarksville.

That railroad is the subject of my book, which was published in 2019. It offers a fascinating window into what it took to finance and build a railroad in the years before the Civil War.