The square emptied out the second Saturday after the Fourth. The music tents came down, the craft booths packed up, and the last of the Jamboree traffic rolled back toward I-40. For anyone who lives here, that quiet stretch between mid-July and Labor Day is the best-kept secret in DeKalb County.
You get your town back. The lunch counters have open stools again. The lake coves that were bumper-to-bumper on Independence Day feel like private property. And the fall calendar hasn't quite started, which means the next few weekends are yours to spend however you like before the Bacon Festival and the Art Walk show up on your doorstep.
Here is what is actually worth your Saturday between now and the end of September.
The square, when you can hear yourself think
Downtown Smithville reads differently in August than it does during Jamboree week. The parking is easy. The regulars are back at their usual tables. If you have not made the rounds in a while, this is the season to do it.
A quick reference for the block around the courthouse:
| Spot | Where | The reason to go |
|---|---|---|
| Button Willow Coffee Shop | 114 W. Main St. | Specialty coffee and tea, shop while you sip |
| Cheryl's Beau Bees | 108 W. Walnut | Lunch Tues–Fri 10 to 5, breakfast added on Saturday from 7 |
| Cafe Healthyish TN | 124 W. Walnut St. | Plant-based, cafe-style, for the day you overdid the barbecue |
| F.Z. Webb & Son's | 608 S. Congress Blvd. | A soda fountain inside a pharmacy that has been family-run since 1881 |
| Singer's Landing | 119 W. Market St. | Brick-oven pizza and scratch pasta, Monday through Saturday 4 to 8 |
Button Willow at 114 W. Main pairs shopping with specialty coffee and tea, Cheryl's Beau Bees at 108 W. Walnut opens for lunch Tuesday through Friday from 10 to 5 with breakfast and lunch on Saturday from 7 to 5, and Cafe Healthyish at 124 W. Walnut serves fresh plant-based food. F.Z. Webb & Son's has been family-owned since 1881 and runs a pharmacy, gift shop, and soda fountain out of the same address on South Congress. Singer's Landing on West Market keeps a Monday through Saturday, 4 to 8 schedule with brick-oven pizza and scratch pasta.
If you have not walked the block from Webb's up to the courthouse in a while, do it on a weekday morning. The pace of the square changes noticeably once school is back.
The Appalachian Center for Craft is a locals' resource, not a tourist stop
This is the part of the guide most people who live here already know about but rarely act on. The ACC sits ten minutes south of town on Highway 56, past Hurricane Bridge, on a wooded campus above Center Hill Lake.
The Appalachian Center for Craft is Tennessee's largest craft institution and a nationally recognized hub for hands-on learning, gallery exhibitions, academic degree programs, and public arts programming, perched on the Highland Rim above Center Hill Lake as part of Tennessee Tech's College of Fine Arts. That description does a lot of work. What it means for a Saturday: the gallery is free, it is air-conditioned, and it has the kind of rotating fine-craft work you would drive to Nashville to see.
The Craft Center Gallery features artwork by more than 150 regional and national artists, is free and open to the public, and keeps hours of Monday through Saturday 10 to 5 and Sunday noon to 5. The turn-off is easy to miss. From I-40 eastbound, take the Smithville exit onto Highway 56 South, drive six miles, cross Hurricane Bridge, and turn immediately left onto the grounds, then follow the 1.2-mile drive to the parking lot.
A rainy Saturday afternoon at the ACC is the closest thing Smithville has to a museum day. Bring somebody visiting from out of town and watch them realize where they are.
The lake, once the July crowds go home
Center Hill is a different lake in August than it is on the Fourth of July.
The lake covers 18,200 acres with 64 miles of shoreline, and locals know that the number that actually matters is not the surface area but the shoreline. Center Hill was created by an Army Corps of Engineers dam completed in 1948 for electricity production and flood control, and the coves that pattern gave the lake are what make late-summer weekends work. When one is full, you keep going.
The three marinas closest to town cluster around the same stretch of water. Sligo, Hurricane, and Hidden Harbor sit close enough that renting a boat from any one of them puts you within a short run of the others. If you have never launched from all three, spend a Saturday each and pick your favorite based on the drive rather than the ramp. Sligo is the shortest hop from downtown.
For a bank day instead of a boat day, Edgar Evins State Park is the obvious answer. Edgar Evins Marina & Restaurant sits at 2100 Edgar Evins Park Rd in Silver Point, and the drive over is worth it on its own.
One thing to plan around: the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency requires slow-no-wake operation inside the Floating Mill Park Recreation Area and prohibits water skis and similar devices there, and the same slow-no-wake rule applies within the buoyed zone near Sand Beach at Rock Island State Park with towing prohibited. If you have kids on tubes, read the buoys before you throttle up.
The stretch between the Jamboree and Labor Day is the only time of year when a Saturday on the water and a Saturday on the square can both feel unhurried.
A break from the water, without leaving DeKalb County
If the heat runs everybody indoors mid-afternoon, the courthouse-adjacent shops on Public Square are the closest air-conditioning that does not involve a chain restaurant. The Purple Door Antiques & Uniques and Refined Boutique are both on the walking loop from the square, and both are the kind of places where you actually run into somebody you know.
For a longer day trip that keeps you in the county, the loop out to Burgess Falls or Window Cliffs State Natural Area is a real option. Both sit inside a 35-minute drive from the square. Cummins Falls, a little farther out toward Cookeville, is a stretch of the same idea.
What is already on the fall calendar
The reason to pay attention now is that the town's autumn calendar is already filling in. If you like to plan a season ahead, put these on your fridge.
- Smithville Bacon Festival 2026. Listed among the upcoming events on the Center Hill Lake tourism calendar for this fall. Worth confirming the date with the organizers as it gets closer.
- 5th Annual Smithville Art Walk. Also on the tourism calendar, an evening event that pulls the downtown galleries and shops together for a coordinated open house.
- Appalachian Center for Craft Holiday Festival. Held on the weekend after Thanksgiving, the festival is free and features craft exhibitions, demonstrations, and handmade Christmas ornaments and gifts. This is the fall ACC visit if you missed the spring one.
- 56th Annual Fiddlers' Jamboree, 2027. Yes, it is early, but the Jamboree already announced the format. The 56th annual weekend kicks off with an official opening ceremony on Thursday evening at 6 p.m. in Evins Park, which is a change worth noting for anyone who usually plans their July around the schedule.
- Grand Ole Opry invitation for the 2027 Grand Fiddle Off Champion. The Grand Ole Opry has invited the 2027 Grand Fiddle Off Champion of the Smithville Fiddlers' Jamboree and Crafts Festival to perform on its stage. If you know a fiddler in town, that is a big deal for local competitors.
The Bacon Festival and Art Walk dates are the two to pin down first. Both draw enough of a crowd that parking on the square becomes an event of its own.
The long view of an August in Smithville
Every small town has a rhythm, and Smithville's is unusually easy to read. The Jamboree defines July. The Bacon Festival and the Holiday Festival at the Craft Center define the run into winter. What sits in the middle is a stretch of weekends where the town is quieter than the calendar suggests, the lake is more usable than it will be next summer, and the businesses that make the square worth walking are open and looking for their regulars.
If you have been meaning to try the soda fountain at Webb's, or you have not been out to the ACC gallery since it changed exhibitions, or your boat has spent more time on the trailer than in the water this year, the next six weekends are the ones to fix that.
We spend a lot of our time talking about Smithville, Silver Point, Baxter, and Cookeville with people who are considering a move here. The reason those conversations tend to go well is that this stretch of the calendar is where the Upper Cumberland actually shows what it is. If you are a neighbor of ours and you have questions about the market around Center Hill Lake, or you know somebody who is asking, Tammy & Lindsey would rather hear from you before the fall listing season picks up. Reach out any time.
