Franklin wins Garden & Gun’s Greatest Southern Towns bracket

 

by Kevin Walters
This story appeared on the front page of the Tennessean on Saturday, April 5, 2014.

Forgive Franklin Mayor Ken Moore if there’s an extra spring in his step. After all, he’s the mayor of the newly christened “Greatest Southern Town.”

“I’ll be strutting a little bit,” Moore said, laughing. “I’m very proud of our community.”

Franklin emerged Friday as the victor in a 32-town NCAA-style bracket matchup organized by the editors of Garden & Gun magazine.

From the online votes, Franklin garnered more than 62,000 of the 90,000 total votes in the final round, allowing Franklin to defeat fellow Southern town Savannah, Ga., in the two-day championship run.

While this is the magazine’s fourth year for a Southern-style “March Madness” online matchup, this is the first year the magazine chose towns as the contest’s topic. Turns out, Southerners are especially proud of their towns. More than 1.3 million total votes caused the magazine’s website to crash at least once.

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