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When early settlers came to the area around Tullahoma, they found it to not be the best for farming, at least for the crops they hoped to grow to feed themselves and their families. One thing that would grow was tobacco, and that turned out to be a worthwhile cash crop for over two-thirds of the counties in Tennessee.

When I first started researching Tullahoma history, I stumbled upon a 1915 photo on the Tennessee State Archives website that showed a tobacco farm called Blue Springs Farm, supposedly in Tullahoma. But where was this farm? No clue and asking around a little produced no answers. Using different search criteria, the same site also had a 1901 tobacco field photo that referenced “J.M. Wilson’s Blue Spring Farm near Tullahoma.” Then another photo, this one from 1890, showed “J.M. Wilson’s Home on Blue Spring Farm.” Where was Blue Spring (or Springs) Farm?

By chance, an 1865 Union Civil War map showing Confederate entrenchments in and around Tullahoma showed up on eBay. It revealed an area just west of town marked “Blue Springs.” Now we’re making progress! Digging some more, I found in a couple of my reference books that there was once a Blue Springs School in Coffee County. One of those, The Heritage of Coffee County Tennessee 1836-2004, contains a short article about the school, and quotes the late Bob Couch (a very knowledgeable Tullahoma historian) as stating that it was in the area where Lynchburg highway and the Old Shelbyville Highway meet, the same area as the Civil War map showed. That’s probably the general location of the Blue Springs Farm.

The 1901 photo also mentioned that the tobacco crop being grown at the farm was for Tullahoma Tobacco Works. The 1913 Sanborn Fire Maps show that the Tullahoma Tobacco Works was located on the west side of Wall Street, about halfway between W. Lincoln and W. Grundy, so right where Traders Bank’s parking lot is now. Interestingly, it was in an iron-clad frame building.

Do you have sharp pictures and interesting stories about people, buildings, businesses, churches or events from Tullahoma’s or Coffee County’s past? If so, reach out to me at alanmayes@lighttube.net.