Raleigh, Memphis, Tennessee

Raleigh is a community in north-central Memphis, Tennessee, United States, named for a formerly incorporated town that used to be at its center. Raleigh is bordered on the west by the community of Frayser (the boundary being the north-south Illinois Central Railroad tracks, which formed the Memphis city limits until 1975), on the east by the incorporated suburb of Bartlett, on the south by the Wolf River and Interstate 40, and on the north by the Memphis city limits. The former town of Raleigh was the first county seat of Shelby County, Tennessee.

Geography

Situated along a high bluff on the Wolf River, Raleigh is one of the highest points in the Memphis area. The old town's center, which was located around the intersection of today's James Road/Stage Road and Old Austin Peay Highway, had a commanding view of the river. Mary Winslow Chapman in her 1977 memoir ''I Remember Raleigh,'' provided these vivid descriptions of the Wolf River in its natural state (before channelization):

:To form any picture of he river's environswe must forget what we now see and imagine the Wolf as it was then, a clear, spring-fed stream slipping silently along through the endless forest, where the unbroken shade shielded it from the fierce Southern sunshine and kept it flowing fresh and cool all summer long... The water was fresh and sweet, flowing out of the uncontaminated woods, but gradually this condition changed. As more and more land upstream was cultivated, more silt was washed into the river. After each rain it took longer for the stream to clear, and finally, with the establishment of the Penal Farm oday's Shelby Farms">Shelby_Farms.html" ;"title="oday's Shelby Farms">oday's Shelby Farmswith all its disagreeable effluvia, swimming became impossible... Gone now forever from this spot are the cane brake and the horses; the tall timber and the mysterious river, where hard by, on Austin Peay IV">Austin Peay