In my lifetime, my hometown has more than tripled in size. Gallatin now has more than 55,000 residents.
There's been a good amount of discussion lately about what this growth means, who benefits, what we lose, and how we hold on to what matters as things continue to change. I feel this personally. I see it when the carpool line backs out of the school parking lot and onto the main road. I see it in the intersections that used to move freely that now take two or three light cycles to get through. These are real frustrations, and I don't dismiss them. But I also think they deserve some context
When I think about Gallatin's current growth, I find myself wanting to call up a broad set of elders who lived through their own version of monumental change. I want a longer perspective that can only be provided by wrinkled hands and a soft voice.
The Elders Who Carried This Place
Gallatin has been truly blessed with many hometown historians over the years. In many ways, these individuals are the elders of our shared community fabric.
- John Garrett
- Walter Durham
- John Puryear
- Jack Masters
- Kenneth Thomson
Any one of these individuals could carry the historical weight of the city on their own, but Gallatin has had many. Collectively, they contributed dozens of books that charted Sumner County's early history.
I recall my great-aunt telling me about the icebox that preserved food before electrical lines reached rural areas like Castalian Springs. Or how the landscape transformed when TVA built the dam that created Old Hickory Lake, flooding a large portion of the old family farm. That wasn't a small inconvenience. That was the world turning over.
The Longer Arc
When we talk about change, context matters. In some ways, we are all living through our own version of that kind of transformation, just in a different form. The question I keep coming back to is: what would this place look like if the previous generation had slowed or blocked what progress looked like in their day?
I find it helps to take the longer arc when weighing these kinds of questions. The daily frustrations are real, and they deserve our attention. But a community that refuses to engage with change doesn't preserve what it loves. It just falls behind. Gallatin has always moved forward by working through hard transitions, not around them, and our ability to do that now is no less essential to our future than it has ever been.
