“Pig Alley” is one of the most endearing pieces of local folklore in Tipton County, serving as the unofficial, community-preferred name for Washington Avenue in downtown Mason, Tennessee. Though the street is formally mapped under its presidential name, generations of local families and residents almost exclusively refer to it as Pig Alley—a nickname born directly out of the town’s mid-19th-century agricultural origins.
The Origin: “Mason’s Hog Pen”
The story of Pig Alley dates back to the 1850s, when the Memphis & Ohio Railroad was surveying and laying tracks through the fertile cotton plantation country of southeastern Tipton County. A wealthy local planter named James E. Mason agreed to give the railroad a right-of-way through his property, eventually donating additional acreage for a passenger depot, hotels, and local storefronts.
However, the specific corridor chosen by the railroad engineers ran directly through the middle of James Mason’s highly active, expansive swine enclosure. The daily sight of massive locomotives chugging straight through a muddy pen of scattering hogs amused the early railroad workers and engineers. They quickly began calling the nascent settlement “Mason’s Hog Pen” or “Mason’s Pigpen.”
While the town eventually adopted the more dignified name of Mason when it was officially incorporated in 1869, the street that ran parallel to the iron tracks through that original swine yard permanently retained the earthy designation in the minds of the public.
A Name Captured in History
The nickname was so deeply woven into the local culture that it bypassed the official city naming conventions. This was beautifully demonstrated by federal census workers in the early 20th century. While the 1920 Federal Census correctly listed residents living along the downtown commercial strip as residing on Washington Avenue, the 1930 Federal Census recorded families living in those exact same homes as residing on “Pig Alley.” The census taker had simply recorded the street name dictated to them by the locals, forever preserving the nickname in formal United States government archives.
Today, Pig Alley remains a vital link to Mason’s past. While many of the dense brick storefronts that originally lined the railroad corridor were destroyed by devastating fires and decades of economic shifts, the name endures as a proud badge of rural heritage. It serves as a reminder of the time when a simple plantation hog pen sat at the center of a booming 19th-century railroad hub.