The Lexington-Huntingdon Road

The Lexington-Huntingdon Road was the original roadbed connecting the county seats of Henderson and Carroll counties and, before the railroad, served as the primary transportation route while also figuring prominently in the Battle of Parker's Crossroads. After the railroad arrived, roads became secondary commercial routes, stage companies stopped maintaining the roads they had once traveled, and men responsible through their taxes for one day each month of road repair and maintenance neglected those duties, so the roads fell into disrepair. By the Civil War, travel on rural roads was unpleasant at best, with dusty, rutted conditions in dry weather and nearly impassable mud when wet. Snow, sleet, and rain during the two weeks before the Battle of Parker's Crossroads worsened conditions for heavy military vehicles, including caissons with ammunition weighing more than 3,800 pounds, loaded battery wagons weighing about 1,290 pounds, and 12-pounder guns and limbers with ammunition and implements weighing 3,875 pounds, making movement over a road churned to mud by cavalry and infantry very slow. In the late 1920s, the Tennessee Highway Department planned to relocate the road, and William R. Britt, the great-grandson of Dr. John Parker, protested in a newspaper because of the road's connection to the battle and urged that it cross at its old crossing on the historic battlefield, but the road was relocated and straightened in 1931. The new road, now SR 22, passed about 150 feet west of the original crossroads, and the relocation preserved the old roadbed and an important part of the battlefield from destruction.

Parker's Crossroads, Tennessee · United States