utility easement

Lane Street Project: the gas line (or, your daily dose of sacrilege.)

Not only is it scarred by transmission poles and buried utility trenches, a natural gas pipeline wraps around two sides of Vick Cemetery.

Using NPMS’ Public Viewer, I confirmed the presence of gas tranmission pipelines in the utility easements I’d noticed marked at the two southwestern corners of the cemetery.

Here’s a closer view, with my labeling in yellow:

And here’s the Google Maps view, with the gas line corridor highlighted:

I checked for you — there are no such gas transmission lines near Maplewood Cemetery. Why? Because there are none west of 301 in the whole of Wilson County.

Lane Street Project: the power poles.

Yes, indeed. What you’re looking at is a long line of utility poles marching down Bishop L.N. Forbes (formerly, Lane) Street, well within the historic boundaries of Vick and Rountree Cemeteries. 

Three enormous poles pin down the edge of Vick Cemetery. I don’t know when the easement was granted for the lines, or when they were erected, but I can guarantee it was decades after the Lane Street cemeteries were established. 

The first pole below stands on the high ridge at the front of Rountree Cemetery. Its base is completely engulfed by at least a decade of woody growth. Not thirty feet away, under a canopy of honeysuckle and other vines, is a pile of broken headstones dating to the 1920s. Were they moved to make way for power poles?

Whose lines are these?

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, March 2022.