Meeting Of The Waters To Be Preserved

A 65 acre tract at the meeting of the Harpeth and West Harpeth Rivers known as Meeting of the Waters is now unavailable for development.

Today Ridley and Irene Wills announced they’re donating a permanent conservation easement on their historic Williamson County property to the Land Trust of Tennessee. The farm was given to Thomas Harden Perkins for his service as an officer in the Revolutionary War, and includes the plantation home Perkins built in the early 1800s. While it remains private property, from now on the land cannot be subdivided and nothing larger than a small barn may be built there.

Meeting of the Waters lies in the corridor between Nashville and Franklin, which has seen substantial development in recent years. Ridley Wills says that makes it all the more important to preserve open spaces such as his farm.

“Occasionally, like a few minutes ago, I saw a coyote cross the field, often we see a blue heron in the field, and we just increasingly came to the conclusion that we don’t want this field subdivided. It protects this house and is the vista from our porch.”

The easement on the Wills land is part of a concerted effort by the Land Trust to preserve land along the Natchez Trace Corridor. In the past five years, the organization has secured easements on about 32-hundred acres in the area.