History buffs can now tour Franklin’s civil war battle sites using their cell phones. It’s long taken a little extra effort to picture the historic events, since what was once a battlefield is now largely covered by development. To help make things more clear, the city’s parks department has erected signs at eleven key locations.
Each sign shows a phone number and instructions for dialing in recordings that explain what happened on that spot.
“…Look farther north along the left side of Columbia Pike and you will see the Carter House. The Carter family…and others took refuge in the basement of this brick home as the battle raged above them…”
The narrator goes on to tell how to find the next stop on the cell phone tour.
In recent years, preservationists have won several grants to save what little remains of Franklin’s battlefield. Local officials began to see an uptick in the number of visitors to the sites last year, after the 150th anniversary of the war’s start.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM