Upper South

US 70: Broadway of America

Memphis to Nashville, pre-interstate

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Drive

Memphis → Nashville

Distance

~210 miles

Time

2 days

Highways

US 70

Avoids

I-40

Region

Upper South

Before I-40, US 70 was the Broadway of America, and its Tennessee act still carries the republic's stranger cargo: the one-room school where Tina Turner learned to read (Nutbush, city limits and all), Casey Jones's house and fatal locomotive lore at Jackson, North America's only freshwater pearl farm, the quiet roadside memorial where Patsy Cline's plane went down, and Loretta Lynn's whole ranch kingdom at Hurricane Mills. Finish with whole-hog at a White Bluff institution.

📍 Broadway of America nostalgia lives in the motel signs; the music trail markers do the formal work.

The drive, segment by segment

Hatchie Country

Memphis → Jackson · ~85 mi

Nutbush and Brownsville's heritage center, then Casey Jones's railroad town.

• 🎸Tina Turner Museum — Brownsville

  Flagg Grove School, the one-room schoolhouse from Nutbush where Anna Mae Bullock studied, moved and enshrined at the Delta Heritage Center.

• 🏛️Casey Jones Home & Railroad Museum — Jackson

  The engineer's house and the ballad's whole apparatus; he died on the brake in 1900 and the song did the rest.

The Tennessee Crossing

Jackson → Waverly · ~65 mi

Pearl country at Camden, the Patsy Cline memorial in the woods, and the river's big water.

• 🛸Tennessee River Pearl Farm — Camden

  North America's only freshwater pearl farm, harvesting from Kentucky Lake mussels at Birdsong Creek; tours by arrangement.

• 🎸Patsy Cline Memorial — Camden

  A quiet marker in the woods off Mount Carmel Road where the 1963 crash took Patsy, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins. Go softly.

Into Music City

Waverly → Nashville · ~60 mi

Loretta's ranch spur, White Bluff barbecue, and the old road's run into Nashville.

• 🎸Hurricane Mills — Hurricane Mills

  Loretta Lynn bought the whole town: plantation house, replica Butcher Hollow cabin, campground and museum. The Coal Miner's Daughter as landlord.

• 🍽️Carl's Perfect Pig — White Bluff

  A US 70 whole-hog institution; the white beans and slaw hold up their end of the plate.

Worth a detour

• Ruskin — Remnants and cave of an 1890s socialist colony that printed its own scrip in Dickson County; utopia lasted five years, the cave endures.
• Montgomery Bell State Park — Iron-master country turned CCC park; the church-birthplace of the Cumberland Presbyterians sits by the lake.