Things To Do

Duck River Greenway

The Duck River Greenway winds along the banks of one of the most biologically diverse rivers in North America, offering walkers and cyclists a quiet stretch of trail shaded by sycamores and river birch. On a slow morning you can watch great blue herons fish the shallows while the rest of the county is still waking up. It is the kind of place that reminds you why people choose to stay in Maury County.

Riverside Drive, Columbia, TN 38401

James K. Polk Home & Museum

The ancestral home of the 11th President of the United States stands quietly on Seventh Street, a Federal-style brick house that looks much as it did when young James Knox Polk grew up here before heading to the White House. The museum inside tells the story of Polk's presidency — manifest destiny, the Mexican-American War, the founding of the Naval Academy — through period furniture and original artifacts that few Americans have ever seen up close. For a place so central to the nation's story, it remains one of the South's most underappreciated historic sites.

301 W 7th St, Columbia, TN 38401

Puckett's Grocery & Restaurant

Puckett's on the Square is a Columbia institution that serves honest Tennessee food — biscuits, barbecue, catfish, and sweet tea — in a room that feels like a general store that decided to start cooking. On Friday and Saturday nights the back corner turns into a stage, and the live music fills the whole square with something that sounds like the real Tennessee. It is the sort of place that out-of-towners drive two hours to reach and locals take entirely for granted.

One Public Square, Columbia, TN 38401

Maury County Park

Six hundred acres of green space off Campground Road make Maury County Park the largest recreational ground in the region, with hiking trails, fishing ponds, athletic fields, and enough room to spend an entire Saturday without running into the same person twice. The Duck River loop trail through the back of the park is particularly lovely in the fall, when the hardwoods go copper and gold along the water. Bring a fishing pole and a lunch, and you will not regret the trip.

1018 Campground Rd, Columbia, TN 38401

The Mulehouse

Downtown Columbia's most intimate music venue occupies a renovated space that manages to feel both polished and lived-in, the way a good room always does. The Mulehouse books a range of acts — Americana, folk, rock, singer-songwriter — and its low stage and close-set tables mean you are never more than thirty feet from whoever is playing. Catch a show on a Friday night and you will understand why the local music scene is one of the county's best-kept secrets.

117 W 7th St, Columbia, TN 38401

Chickasaw Trace Community Park

Chickasaw Trace has earned a regional reputation among mountain bikers for its winding single-track trails through hardwood forest, but hikers and trail runners have quietly claimed it for themselves as well. The terrain rolls through the kind of Tennessee woods that still feel genuinely wild — cedar glades, limestone outcrops, creek crossings — without requiring more than a short drive from the Columbia square. It is free, it is beautiful, and on a weekday morning it is nearly yours alone.

1352 Hatcher Ln, Columbia, TN 38401

Historic Downtown Columbia Square

The 1904 Maury County Courthouse anchors a square that has remained the commercial and civic heart of Columbia for well over a century, surrounded by independent shops, restaurants, and storefronts that have resisted the gravitational pull of the strip mall. On a spring or fall afternoon the square is the best possible argument for small-city life — walkable, human-scaled, and full of the kind of particular character that no chain restaurant can manufacture. Spend an hour here and you will understand what the fuss is about.

Public Square, Columbia, TN 38401

McCreary's Irish Pub & Eatery

McCreary's has occupied its corner of the courthouse square long enough to feel like part of the architecture, serving pints and proper pub food to a crowd that ranges from courthouse lawyers to college students to people who have been coming since the place opened. Live music on weekends fills the bar with sound that spills out onto the square, and the kitchen holds up its end of the bargain with reliable Irish-American comfort food. It is exactly the kind of neighborhood pub every Southern town deserves.

4 Public Square, Columbia, TN 38401

The Boondox

Out on US-431, The Boondox is the kind of roadhouse that gives Maury County its edge — a live music and entertainment venue that draws crowds from across Middle Tennessee for its lineup of country, rock, and Southern soul acts. The room is unpretentious and loud in the best possible way, with a bar that stays busy and a stage that has hosted its share of acts you will later wish you had seen when they were still playing rooms this size. It is not the courthouse square, but it is undeniably Columbia.

4537 US-431, Columbia, TN 38401

Mule Day Festival Grounds

Every April since 1934, the Maury County Fairgrounds has hosted Mule Day, one of the oldest and most genuinely peculiar festivals in the American South — a celebration of the mule's role in Tennessee agriculture that draws tens of thousands of visitors, a mule parade down the main street, and competitions that you will not find anywhere else on earth. The fairgrounds sit quietly most of the year, but in the first weekend of April they become the beating heart of Maury County, and the county is the better for it. If you have never seen a mule show, you owe it to yourself.

1018 Campground Rd, Columbia, TN 38401

Courthouse Square Farmers Market

Saturday mornings on the square belong to the farmers market, where Maury County growers set up alongside bakers, jam-makers, flower vendors, and the occasional local craftsman in a gathering that has the informal warmth of a church potluck and the genuine goods to back it up. Come early for the best selection of seasonal produce — strawberries in spring, tomatoes in summer, butternut squash in the fall — and stay for the coffee and the conversation. It is one of those small rituals that makes a place feel like a community.

Public Square, Columbia, TN 38401

Columbia Arts Building

The Columbia Arts Building houses local galleries and working studio spaces that collectively represent the creative pulse of a community that has been quietly building an arts scene alongside its economic growth. Rotating exhibitions feature regional painters, photographers, and mixed-media artists, and the open studio events give visitors a chance to watch work being made rather than simply hanging on walls. For a county better known for mules and manufacturing, it is a reminder that Columbia has always had an artistic streak.

307 W 7th St, Columbia, TN 38401

Stillhouse Hollow Falls