Nashville: The Depression Years

Over the next 20 years Nashville would see tremendous growth and change.

Prohibition, which began a decade earlier in Nashville, was passed nationwide in 1919 lasting until 1933.

The Women's Suffrage movement, spear-headed by the Nashville Equal Suffrage League, would ultimately lead Tennessee into casting the deciding vote for the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

In 1930 a run on banks started in Nashville and swept through the middle South marking the beginnings of the depression years.

Tennessee Valley Authority began in 1933 and along with it came cheaper electric power that encouraged the economic growth and development in Nashville.

Nashville would see the formation of Nashville symphony orchestra and the reopening of the Parthenon.

Nashville's first airfields and airports would appear in 1919 and another in 1937. The building of a War Memorial Building followed the ending of WW1 and the creation of a state museum in its lower level following in 1937.

Nashville had several disasters in this era including several tornados with the worst striking in East Nashville in 1933, the Dutchman's Grade Train Wreck in 1918, A Typhus Outbreak in 1939. It would also endure several floods, with the floods of 1937 and 1927 being the most memorable.

It would also see the start of WSM Radio Station by the National Life and Accident Company in 1925, with the Grand Ole Opry beginning the following year-an occurrence that would change Nashville's future forever.