Middle Tennessee State University students walk past the large columns while visiting the library on campus in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Murfreesboro’s first multi-use hotel and conference center attracts conventions, seminars, corporate gatherings and other events. The complex, located in the fast-growing Gateway development, features a 10-story, 283-suite hotel and more than 43,000 square feet of meeting and event space, including a 28,000-square-foot ballroom.

More than 6,100 Union soldiers are buried in Stones River National Cemetery. The Stones River National Battlefield is the site of the Battle of Stones River, which began on the last day of 1862 and was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the Civil War.

At the Barrett Firearms manufacturing facility in Murfreesboro an employee welds part of a semi-automatic .50 caliber M82A1 rifle, a model like that used by the U.S. armed forces for extreme long range shooting.

A motor boat glides across J. Percy Priest Lake, near the Fate Sanders Recreation Area located above Smyrna in northwestern Rutherford County.