Photograph courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives

More than four decades before the historic 1961 grand opening of Belle Meade Plaza, the area was (and still is) known as the site of the nation’s deadliest rail disaster.

The July 9, 1918, Dutchman’s Curve Train Wreck claimed 101 lives when an outbound train from Nashville collided head-on with an incoming train from Memphis that fateful early morning.

Dozens more were injured, and the tragedy is commemorated with a marker on White Bridge Road near the entrance of Richland Creek Greenway. The crash occurred closer to where the greenway meets McCabe Golf Course, but train cars and debris littered the rail line.

Now, more than 60 years since the birth of the Plaza, there’s a plan underway to redevelop the aged shopping center into a mixed-use property that will serve the area for another six decades. To some, this next transition serves as a reminder of the area’s past, present and future.

“We have to respect our history,” says District 24 Council member Kathleen Murphy. “We have a historic marker on White Bridge Road for Dutchman’s Curve, which is very meaningful history to me because my grandfather drove trains.

“He was a train engineer and, because of that wreck, we had a lot of improvement in that industry. And that wreck occurred farther down where the Greenway is that remains so important. Richland Creek Greenway around McCabe and over to White Bridge is our most popular greenway in Nashville.”

Longtime WTVF political analyst Pat Nolan lives in West Nashville not too far from Richland Creek. His great uncle, John Nolan, was the engineer of the outbound train going to Memphis and died in that disaster.

“It was a terrible situation. He was in the back of the train, but he decided to go up to the front of the train to go into one of the dining cars, and that was where the worst deaths were,” Nolan says.

“The front of the train had a lot of the older cars they made out of wood. The back of it was more in the steel stuff where the accordion effect was not quite as severe as (those in front), which basically got obliterated.”

Read the Ledger’s 2018 story commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Dutchman’s Curve Train Wreck.