Highland Rim
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The Highland Rim is a geographic term for the area in Tennessee surrounding the Central Basin. Nashville is largely surrounded by higher terrain in all directions.
Geologicially, the Central Basin is actually opposite, being a dome. The Highland Rim is a cuesta surrounding the basin, and the border where the difference in elevation is sharply pronounced is an escarpment.
It is located somewhat in the northwestern corner of the Basin. There are sections of the Rim referred to by all four of the cardinal directions, i.e., "Northern Highland Rim", etc. The Northern Highland Rim is encountered just a few miles north of Nashville proper and extends to the Kentucky border, and the region of Kentucky adjacent to it called the Pennyroyal is in fact largely a continuation of it under another name. The Western Rim is similarly encountered only a few miles west of Nashville, and extends to the western valley of the Tennessee River. The Eastern Rim rises approximately fifty miles east of Nashville, and is bordered to its east by even higher terrain, the Cumberland Plateau. For the most part the Southern Rim is the farthest from Nashville, rising at some points just a few miles north of the border with Alabama. Again, the landforms here are continuous with those in adjacent portions of Alabama, although perhaps the most spectacular landforms of any portion of the Rim are to be found here.
It should be recognized that the Rim is rather continuous and any division of it, including the one made above, is necessarily somewhat arbitrary. The term "Highland" here is relative: it is certainly higher than the Basin it surrounds, but it nonetheless seldom at an elevation above 1,100 feet above sea level, and never more than about 1,400 feet above sea level except where interrupted, primarily to the southeast, by outliers of the Cumberland Plateau. With the exception of a few broad stream bottoms, the land is characterised by ridges and valleys with a few fairly low hills. The entire region is well watered with many perennial streams, and occasional waterfalls which sometimes delineate the Rim from the Basin which it surrounds.
