Local Perspective – February

My entire life has been spent in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. It is a small town established in 1835 and then incorporated as a city in 1972. It’s always been known as a wonderful community to raise a family.

I was brought home from St. Thomas Hospital to Mt. Juliet in 1962 and was raised on a small farm consisting of about 17 acres of woods and pasture off of Nonaville Road.

Our only pastimes were hunting and fishing in Cedar Creek, catching as many bream and bass as we felt like we could clean. Hunting squirrels, rabbit, and deer were the highlights of our days, and then came the Mt. Juliet Little League in 1968. Our city was growing, and we had something else to call our own.

That “little league park,” created by community leaders like Harold Sutton and so many others, was the beginning of something that would not only last through the ages, but prosper and become a national leader and model for youth sports.

We were in heaven in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. As more and more people found our little piece of heaven, the population grew and grew.

Incorporated with only 1,200 people in the city limits in 1972, by the year 2000 we had about 13,000 in our city, and the landscape was changing.
In 2000, liquor by the drink was passed, by referendum, in the city. Providence Marketplace was born, and the little city of Mt. Juliet became a
growing, thriving city as a suburb of Nashville.

The south end of Mt. Juliet is growing so fast, and so many people have moved here from other areas bringing different ways of thinking and living. Del Webb, Bradford Park, and The Villages are all very dense new developments in the Providence area. Providence Marketplace is full of restaurants and retail stores that provide us with the opportunity to stay in Wilson County to spend our money.

Along with all of the new people in Mt. Juliet, come so many opportunities to live, work, play, and worship. Our city is full of places to worship with two newer churches, Joy Church and Providence United Methodist Church, and the older established churches have grown with the city. First Baptist Church of Mt. Juliet, that also houses the Mt. Juliet Christian Academy and the Mt. Juliet Church of Christ, have grown over the many years becoming our traditional mainstays in Mt. Juliet.

In the northern part of the city, life is a little slower paced. Cedar Creek is still a beautiful and flowing major piece of the life and feel for North Mt. Juliet. The “crawdad hole” is still there. The little deep pools where you can fish and swim still flow. The old Cedar Creek Boat Dock still exists as Cedar Creek Marina. As you come across the bridge over Interstate 40, people say they can feel the pressure and stress just…go away. They can breathe…

There’s still a part of Mt. Juliet that remains the way it was so many years ago, but it’s all home. There’s just more of it now.