Hidden Trace Farm Pavillion

A Sports Pavilion For At Risk Communites

The 2-week workshop culminated in the raising of a pavilion that measured 78-½ feet drip line to drip line and 111 feet long and 28 feet tall. The eight-bent frame design is comprised of over 470 southern pine timbers and glulams (for the 42-foot rafters) and over 30,000 board feet, grabbing a large volume of space with no interior posts and making it an ideal choice for a sports pavilion. The pavilion was designed by Joe Miller of Fire Tower Engineered Timber to accommodate both full-size high school basketball and volleyball courts.

Hidden Trace Farm is very near the historic Natchez Trace, which originally was a geologic ridgeline path used in prehistoric times by animals such as bison to move through their grazing range and to the salt licks in Middle Tennessee, in today’s Nashville area. Improved first by indigenous people for trade and to expand their settlements, under President Thomas Jefferson it became the first road from Daniel Boone’s settlement to the Mississippi River. 

Hidden Trace Farm is a place where communities at risk in the greater Nashville area can come for a variety of activities, including recreation and fundraising. Serving Nashville youth, battered women’s shelters, and veterans groups, among others, the farm is being developed further for this purpose as well as to support learning about the history of the area.