Trousdale County, Tennessee
Trousdale County, also known as Hartsville/Trousdale County, is a county in the US state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 11,615. Its county seat is Hartsville, with which it shares a consolidated city-county government. With an area of just 117 square miles (300 km2), it is Tennessee's smallest county in terms of geographic size.
Trousdale County is part of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN Metropolitan Statistical Area, although it is located just beyond the ring of "bedroom communities" in the Nashville metropolitan area. Farms and livestock ranches take up most of the land in this largely rural area.
Hartsville is the county seat of Trousdale County and now coextensive with it as a metropolitan government by virtue of a referendum which passed in Trousdale County by a single vote. Trousdale County High School is located here, as well as a technical school operated by the Tennessee Board of Regents. Trousdale County is one of two counties in Tennessee to have legalized parimutuel betting on horse racing, but no group has ever stepped forward to build a racetrack.
In 2016, Corrections Corporation of America (since renamed CoreCivic) opened the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center in Hartsville. Its approximately 2,500 prisoners constitute over a fifth of the county's residents and nearly 12% of Tennessee state prisoners. The prison became a hot spot for COVID-19 cases during the COVID-19 pandemic, giving the county the highest incidence rate in the U.S. in May 2020, with 1 in 7 residents known to be infected with coronavirus.