Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Population: 92,559
Located in Rutherford County

The county seat, Murfreesboro, sits in the center of Rutherford County along the river named after early settler and explorer Uriah Stone, who in 1775 navigated up the river from its mouth near Fort Donelson (now Nashville). The community and local area grew along with the new state of Tennessee. The first county seat was established in the community of Jefferson, near Smyrna, and in 1811 the town of Cannonsburgh was incorporated as the County seat. After only 33 days the name of the town was changed to Murfreesboro in honor of Revolutionary War Col. Hardy Murfree, one of several early settlers.

Rutherford County, with beginnings all the way back to the first years of the new state of Tennessee, was actually began as part of a much larger geographic area that spanned east towards the Cumberland Plateau, and south towards the southern edge of the Highland Rim. Originally part of Davidson County and the government of what was Fort Donelson and Nashborough, in 1803 the area was granted county status independent of what we now know as Nashville. In just a few more years, as the American westward movement became more pronounced, the legislature was petitioned to carve new counties out of the area that was Rutherford County, but still left one of the larger-sized area counties in the Middle Tennessee area (620+ square miles).

Murfreesboro was the state capital of Tennessee from 1819 to 1825, during which time the center of the downtown area was the economic hub of the state. However, political and economic influences from the city (and larger river port) of Nashville, just 32 miles (50 km) to the northwest, drew away the center of state government to its present home. Murfreesboro nevertheless remained a significant economic center based largely on its agriculture and location between Nashville and Chattanooga.

Today, Murfreesboro and Rutherford County are Booming! Our county is now 148,000 people strong as of a 1995 estimate by the State of Tennessee. A census is underway to revise and count the citizens of Rutherford County in order to better justify increased shares of Federal revenue, and the results will be reported on this page as soon as they are available. The rate of growth (25 percent population increase since 1990) indicates we are among one of the fastest growing centers in Tennessee and the Southeastern United States.