About Rutherford County

Rutherford County, as of the 2010 census, is the state's fifth-largest county by population with 262,604 people. Its county seat is Murfreesboro, which is also the geographic center of Tennessee, as well as the center of population of Tennessee. The county is included in the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin Metropolitan Statistical Area.

About Murfreesboro

Murfreesboro is a city in and the county seat of Rutherford County, Tennessee.

Although Murfreesboro is sometimes considered a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, which is 35 miles to the northwest, it is far enough away and has a large enough population to maintain a separate identity from its larger neighbor, and thus can be considered a smaller city within the Nashville-Murfreesboro metropolitan area. The city is also home to Middle Tennessee State University, the largest undergraduate university in the state of Tennessee, with an undergraduate population of 22,299 and 25,188 total students as of 2009.

In 2006, Murfreesboro was ranked by Money as the 84th best place to live in the United States, out of 745 cities with a population over 50,000.