Ten things worth knowing about Cookeville

Every town has stories that get passed along at the counter and on the porch. Here are ten about Cookeville, each checked against the record, for the next time someone from out of town asks what makes this place tick.

How Cookeville got its name and its start

1. It was almost Monticello. When the legislature first created Putnam County in 1842, the act called for a county seat named Monticello. Overton and Jackson counties went to court, and in 1845 a chancery court at Livingston dissolved the new county. When lawmakers re-established it on February 11, 1854, the act named the county town for Richard F. Cooke, a state senator from 1851 to 1854 whose bill brought the county back.

2. The town began on one man's hill. The first county court chose a hilly tract owned by Charles Crook for the courthouse, and Cookeville was incorporated in February 1856. That charter was repealed around the time of the Four Mile Law, and the General Assembly incorporated the town again in April 1903.

3. It has been the Hub City for nearly a century. By 1928 the town was already calling itself the hub of the Upper Cumberland. Tennessee Tech still describes Cookeville that way: the center of a 14-county region of about 317,000 people.

The ground under your feet

4. Sinkholes do the plumbing. Cookeville sits at about 1,140 feet on the eastern Highland Rim, and the city's 2030 Comprehensive Plan notes that a large share of the area's drainage runs through sinkholes. The plan lists sinkhole retention areas alongside steep slopes and floodplains as the biggest natural limits on where the city can build.

5. Waterfalls are the neighbors. Tourism officials count ten waterfalls within an hour of town, five of them designed to be fully accessible. The visitors bureau's Waterfalls For All program, built around falls such as Cummins, Burgess and Twin Falls, lists drivable overlooks, gentler trails and all-terrain wheelchairs for rent.

Campus and rails

6. Tennessee Tech's colors grew by the roadside. The university says purple and gold were chosen before 1925 for two wildflowers, ironweed and goldenrod, that grew thickly on campus. Students picked the Golden Eagles name in 1925, believed to be inspired by golden eagles often seen over the early campus. The school began as Dixie College, chartered in 1909, became Tennessee Polytechnic Institute in 1915 and took its current name in 1965.

7. The depot was called the Jewel. The Tennessee Central built its brick depot on West Broad Street in 1909, one of only three brick depots on the line, with an unusual pagoda-style roof. Passenger service ended in 1955, the city bought the building in 1975, and in 1985 it joined the National Register and opened as a museum. A 1913 Baldwin steam engine sits on the grounds, and admission is free.

8. A trail follows the tracks. The paved Tennessee Central Trail runs about 4.3 miles alongside an active rail line from the depot north to Algood. In April 2026 the trail's board went looking for an engineer to design a short connector between the West End neighborhood and Cane Creek Park.

Neon and donuts

9. The sign weighs three tons. Cream City dates itself to the 1890s: by the shop's own account it began as a dairy called Consumer City, shipping milk by covered wagon. After a 1948 fire, the building that stands today on West Broad Street was finished in 1950, and a three-ton neon sign went up on the roof, later counted by American Road Magazine among the top 100 neon signs in the country. Since 2011 the building has been Cream City Ice Cream and Coffee House, scooping more than 40 handmade flavors, and in 2025 the downtown group CityScape won a Downtown Improvement Grant to rewire the original neon for the sign's 75th birthday.

10. A donut shop is on the National Register. Ralph and Evelyn Smith opened Ralph's Donut Shop on South Cedar Avenue in September 1962, in a building said to have been the town's bus stop. It started with six stools, doubled in size in 1974 and stayed open around the clock until 1992. On August 1, 2025, the National Park Service added it to the National Register of Historic Places.

Four of these ten, the depot, the trail, Cream City and Ralph's, sit within a few blocks of each other on the WestSide, which makes a fine afternoon for anyone who wants to see the stories in person.