9 Picture-Perfect Main Streets In Tennessee
Morristown loved its main street so much it built a second one directly above the first. The best downtowns in Tennessee are full of touches like that. Clinton still scoops banana splits at a soda fountain that opened in 1930. Jonesborough hands its Main Street over to storytellers every October. Collierville shows off a 1912 steam locomotive right on its town square. These nine streets kept everything worth keeping, and each one rewards a slow afternoon on foot.
Jonesborough
Every October, the first full weekend of the month turns Jonesborough into the storytelling capital of the world. The National Storytelling Festival started here in 1973 with about sixty people on hay bales, and it now draws close to eleven thousand listeners to tents pitched around Main Street. The International Storytelling Center sits right on the same street, so the town keeps the tradition going all year.
The rest of the walk lives up to the billing in Tennessee's oldest town, chartered in 1779. Main Street Cafe & Catering has served since 1982 out of the old post office building, which makes it the longest-running restaurant in town. The Lollipop Shop stocks candy downstairs and hides a retro arcade with hundreds of games upstairs. Duke & Fox makes handmade dog collars a few doors down, and McLeod Organics rounds out the block with supplements and essential oils.
Columbia
James K. Polk's family home stands two blocks off the Columbia square, built by his father Samuel in 1816 and one of only two Polk houses left standing. The eleventh president lived here before he ran for anything. The Maury County Courthouse anchors the square a short walk away, and the surrounding blocks hold shops like Accents and Antiques on the Public Square, open for more than twenty years across two floors.
Columbia calls itself the Mule Capital of the World, and it backs the title up every April with Mule Day, a tradition that traces to a livestock market from the 1840s. First Fridays bring live music to the square through the warmer months. The Bourbon Gospel serves food and hosts songwriters over on South Garden Street, and the Duck River runs along the edge of downtown, less than forty miles south of Nashville.
Leiper's Fork
Leiper's Fork has about 650 residents and not a single traffic light, and its whole downtown fits along one stretch of Old Hillsboro Road. The village grew up beside the Natchez Trace and its historic district now sits on the National Register. Musicians play porches here on ordinary weekends, which is how a place this small ended up with a national reputation.
Fox & Locke holds down the middle of the strip in the 1947 general store that Nashville knew for years as Puckett's, with Southern plates and live music most nights and a Thursday open mic that draws songwriters out from the city. Three galleries line the same short walk: Leiper's Creek Gallery in an old filling station, David Arms across the street, and The Copper Fox in a restored Victorian house. Even the Shell station earns a stop, since the Leiper's Fork Market doubles as a scrappy local-history museum with arrowheads and moonshiner photos hung between the coolers.
Morristown
Morristown put its sidewalks on the second floor. After Turkey Creek flooding crowded the ground level in the early 1960s, the town finished the SkyMart in 1967, a system of overhead walkways that turned upstairs windows into a street of their own. It is the last surviving overhead sidewalk system of its kind in the country, and the view from up there is the reason to visit.
Back at ground level, the Rose Center for the Arts fills the old Rose School, a coeducational public school from 1892 that now runs galleries and classes. The Downtown Green hosts pop-up shops and a farmers market pavilion, and a taproom, antique boutiques, and clothing shops fill the blocks between. The Hamblen County Courthouse and the Morristown-Hamblen Public Library sit a short distance away.
Sweetwater
The biggest attraction in Sweetwater is underground. The Lost Sea sits inside Craighead Caverns just outside town, a boat tour on the largest underground lake in the country, more than a hundred feet below the surface. Guinness recognizes it, and it has been a National Natural Landmark since 1974.
Above ground, Sweetwater Main Street brands itself the Sweetest Street in Tennessee, and the downtown lives up to it. Cup Runneth Over Coffeehouse pours coffee and bakes on North Main Street, and 3 Generations Art Studio sits nearby for paint-and-pottery afternoons. The brick Sweetwater Heritage Museum keeps the local history, Circle Park holds a vintage rail car, and Friday night concerts and parades keep the calendar full through the season.
Clinton
The Green McAdoo Cultural Center tells the story of the Clinton 12. In August 1956, twelve Black students walked into Clinton High School and became the first to desegregate a state-supported public high school in the South, a full year before Little Rock. The center fills the old Green McAdoo school, and a life-size bronze of the twelve students stands out front.
Downtown Clinton bills itself as Tennessee's largest antique district, with more than twenty antique and specialty shops along Market Street mixed among boutiques, coffee shops, and restaurants. Hoskins Drug Store has run an authentic soda fountain since 1930 and still scoops banana splits at the counter. The Ritz Theater and a Friday farmers market round out a downtown that keeps its history in plain view.
Dandridge
Dandridge is the only town in the United States named for Martha Washington, using her maiden name, Dandridge. It is also Tennessee's second oldest town, settled in 1783, and when the TVA built Douglas Dam in the 1940s and the rising lake threatened downtown, residents petitioned Washington and won an earthen dike that still holds the water back behind Town Hall.
The historic district earned its National Register listing in 1973, and the old buildings back the claim up. The Roper Tavern went up in 1817 to serve stagecoach and river travelers, built by John Roper, a War of 1812 veteran. Across the street, Roper began the Roper Mansion in 1820 as a wedding gift for his daughter Mary and her fiancé John Branner, finished in time for their 1821 wedding. The Shepard Inn still takes guests as a bed-and-breakfast in a building that dates to the same era. Knoxville is about thirty miles west.
Maryville
Live music runs down Broadway Avenue, Maryville's main street. Brackins Blues Club has booked blues bands on East Broadway for years, and the Bluetick Tavern anchors West Broadway with a mural celebrating regional music painted right on the wall of the former Roy's Record Shop. Vienna Coffee House pours a few blocks over on College Street.
The town's roots run deeper than the storefronts. Maryville College opened in 1819, one of the fifty oldest colleges in the country, and the Sam Houston Schoolhouse stands nearby, the 1794 log building where a teenage Sam Houston taught before he ever went to Texas. The Blount County Public Library sits on North Cusick Street, right where downtown crosses Broadway.
Collierville
Parade magazine named Collierville's town square America's Best Main Street in 2014, and the square earns it. The Collierville Historic District, listed on the National Register in 1990, wraps a green with a bandstand, cast-iron fences, and an open-air railroad collection: the Frisco 1351 steam locomotive built in 1912, a former Seaboard business car, and a 1940s red caboose beside the old depot.
The Collierville Mural covers a downtown wall with scenes from the town's history. A few blocks on, the Morton Museum of Collierville History fills a Gothic Revival former church that served its congregation from 1873 to 1992 before opening as a museum in 2012. Hallmark filmed a few scenes for its 2019 movie "Wedding at Graceland" on this square, which surprises no one who has walked it.
Walk These Streets Yourself
These nine downtowns carry their history in the open. Jonesborough was chartered in 1779, and Morristown finished its SkyMart walkways in 1967. Some tell a story worth crossing the state for, like the Clinton 12 or the town Martha Washington lent her name to. Others just make for a good afternoon of coffee, antiques, and a soda fountain that has been scooping since before your grandparents were born.
