The name comes from a small natural salt lick that was once at the northwest corner of Highway 22A and the Middlefork Road, that was not large enough, it was said, for a deer or a cow, but about the right size for a lizard.

[3][4] Situated within a few miles of Pinson Mounds, Middle Fork has also produced several sites for Native American artifacts such as arrow heads, drills, scrapers, and pieces of pottery.

Henry Carver, buried at Middle Fork Primitive Baptist Church, was the first casualty during the War.

Several rifles were left behind and the Union soldiers took them to the blacksmith shop and bent the barrels, and then threw them into a ditch.

Also on March 9, 1864, was the brutal murder of Lt. J. W. Dodds, who was on furlough from his unit, by a group from the 4th, 6th, and 7th Tennessee US Cavalries (Official Records War of the Rebellion, Serial 059 Page 0118 Chapter XLIV.

"Private Silas Hodges, a scout, acting under orders from Colonel Tansil, states that he saw the body of Lieutenant Dodds very soon after his murder, and that it was most horribly mutilated, the face having been skinned, the nose cut off, the under jaw disjointed, the privates cut off, and the body otherwise barbarously lacerated and most wantonly injured, and that his death was brought about by the most inhuman process of torture."

Dodds is buried at Unity Baptist Church Cemetery, 2.5 miles south of Middle Fork.

In his biography, Living the Braveheart Life, Wallace has several chapters on his great-grandparents from Lizard Lick, Jake and Mollie Rhodes.