CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – The old stone wall along Spring Street at Riverview Cemetery will be replaced with a new, stronger concrete wall in a $500,000 Clarksville Streets Department project that will begin June 1.
Neely Engineering & Contracting of Clarksville was awarded the contract to take down the failing stone wall and replace it with a poured concrete wall with a stone veneer. The project is expected to take 45-60 days to complete.
The project will require some excavation of the hillside to move the wall back from Spring Street by several feet. The new wall will be a gravity retaining wall and anchored to the underground stone in the hillside where needed to provide structural support.
A section of Spring Street between McClure Street and the Riverview Cemetery entrance will be closed for 2-3 weeks during the excavation work, and be closed down to one lane for the second phase of the project. Entrances to the Animal Hospital and the Montgomery County Animal Control will remain accessible.
The old wall was starting to bulge toward the street in places and was graded as failing. The new concrete wall will have a form liner to retain the historic look and feel of the old wall.
The City-owned cemetery dates to February 1800, when Clarksville was no more than a village. It was placed on land donated by Valentine Sevier, pioneer settler and Revolutionary War Colonel, who was the first recorded internment. The cemetery is considered the oldest known public burial grounds in the area, and is still an active cemetery.
Soldiers from many American wars are interred at Riverview Cemetery, along with 19th century citizens, including Revolutionary War soldier Robert Nelson. One plot contains the reinterred remains of 125 Confederate soldiers.
This failing old stone wall along Spring Street at Riverview Cemetery will be replaced in a project that begins June 1.