Crab Orchard, TN

Crab Orchard is a Cumberland County city on the Cumberland Plateau, set in a gap through the Crab Orchard Mountains. The 2020 census counted 719 residents. City hall, local streets, churches, businesses, and the road west toward Crossville give the town its practical center. The limestone and sandstone country is part of the working landscape: Lhoist North America operates a large limestone mine nearby, while the Cumberland Trail is planned through the area.

The gap made Crab Orchard a travel route between East and Middle Tennessee as early as the late eighteenth century, and pioneers named the place for the wild crab apple trees they found there. The city was founded in 1797 and incorporated in 1973. Local Crab Orchard stone became a recognizable building material, including at Scarritt College in Nashville, and the town still carries that geology into its name and work. Monthly city meetings, quarry jobs, trail planning, and traffic through the plateau keep the old gateway role current. Crab Orchard is a small plateau city where stone, roads, and mountain geography do the talking.