Jonesborough, TN — Where History Doesn't Just Sit in a Museum

Most towns around here have history. Jonesborough has history that goes all the way back to before Tennessee was a state — back when this part of the world was still the western frontier of North Carolina, and the people who settled it were the kind of stubborn, resourceful folks who built a courthouse and a functioning town government out in the wilderness because they simply decided to.

Founded in 1779, Jonesborough is the oldest town in Tennessee. That's not a marketing tagline — it's just a fact, and it's one that reveals itself the moment you turn onto Main Street. The buildings are old. The streets are narrow. And the whole place has a weight to it that you don't find in towns that were built last century.

We're about ten minutes down Highway 107 from Jonesborough at Mountaineer Storage in Chuckey. A lot of our customers come from that direction. And we figured it was about time someone wrote a proper guide to what makes Jonesborough worth the drive — whether you've been going there your whole life or you just moved to the area and haven't explored it yet.

To understand Jonesborough you have to go back to 1779 — fourteen years before Tennessee was even a state. The settlers who built this town were living on land that technically belonged to North Carolina, deep in the Appalachian frontier. They were building a civilization from scratch, and they started with a courthouse. That tells you something about what kind of people they were.

For a brief period in the 1780s, Jonesborough was the capital of the State of Franklin — a short-lived attempt by settlers to form their own independent state, separate from North Carolina, which they felt had abandoned them. The State of Franklin never gained Congressional recognition and eventually dissolved, but the spirit behind it — independent, self-reliant, not particularly interested in being told what to do from a distance — is still part of the character of this corner of East Tennessee.

The nation's first abolitionist newspaper was published in Jonesborough in the early 1800s — a remarkable fact for a Southern town of that era, and a sign that the people here were never entirely predictable. During the Civil War, Northeast Tennessee was a Unionist stronghold in a Confederate state, and Jonesborough felt that tension as sharply as anywhere.

Three U.S. Presidents — Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson — all passed through Jonesborough and stayed at the Chester Inn on Main Street. The inn was built in 1797 and is still standing. You can walk past it today and the fact that Andrew Jackson chose to stay there multiple times on his travels feels entirely real and entirely close.

One of the things that makes Jonesborough genuinely special is that the downtown still looks and feels like a downtown. The historic district is well-preserved — not in a sterile, roped-off-museum kind of way, but in the sense that people actually live and work and shop there. The buildings are old and they're being used. That's rarer than it sounds.

Walking down Main Street you'll find antique shops, pottery studios, local restaurants, and boutiques tucked into buildings that were standing before most American cities existed. The cobblestone streets and period streetlights aren't an affectation — they're just what the street looks like, because the town has been careful about what it allows.

The Jackson Theatre sits in the heart of downtown — a fully restored performance venue that hosts live theatre, concerts, and film screenings throughout the year. The Jonesborough Repertory Theatre is another fixture, putting on productions that draw audiences from across the region.

If you haven't spent an afternoon just walking around downtown Jonesborough, it's worth doing. Even if you grew up nearby, there's something about slowing down and actually looking at it — really looking — that changes how it feels.

In 1973, a high school journalism teacher named Jimmy Neil Smith heard Grand Ole Opry regular Jerry Clower spinning a tale on the radio about coon hunting in Mississippi. Something clicked. Smith decided that Jonesborough — Tennessee's oldest town, sitting in the storytelling heartland of Appalachia — should have a festival dedicated to the art of the told story.

That first October, sixty people gathered in Courthouse Square. The stage was a hay wagon. The seating was hay bales. Nobody knew if it would amount to anything.

It amounted to something. The National Storytelling Festival is now in its 52nd year, draws nearly 11,000 people from all fifty states and countries around the world, and is recognized as one of the top 100 events in North America. Jonesborough is officially known as the Storytelling Capital of the World — a title that belongs to a town of roughly 5,000 people in Northeast Tennessee.

The format is simple and it works: storytellers perform inside large tents scattered through downtown, and festival-goers walk from tent to tent catching different performers throughout the day. The stories range from Appalachian folk tales and personal narratives to ghost stories, cultural traditions, and humor. There's a family tent for kids. There are evening concerts. And there are the Ghost Story performances at Mill Springs Park on Friday and Saturday nights — held under the stars, by some of the country's best storytellers, specifically chosen to unsettle you in the best possible way.

If you've never been, it's worth going at least once. There's a reason people come back year after year from across the country — something happens in those tents that doesn't happen many other places anymore. People put their phones down and just listen.

The International Storytelling Center

Two years after that first festival, Jimmy Neil Smith founded what would eventually become the International Storytelling Center — the first facility in the world devoted exclusively to the art of storytelling. The ISC campus sits in the heart of downtown Jonesborough and hosts live storytelling performances through its Teller-in-Residence program from May through October every year, even outside of festival season.

If you can't make it in October, the ISC's matinee and evening performances run Tuesday through Saturday through the season — 26 of America's best-loved storytellers each spending a week in residence. It's a remarkable thing to have in a town this size, and most people who live nearby don't take advantage of it nearly enough.

If October belongs to the National Storytelling Festival, July belongs to Jonesborough Days — a heritage festival held every Fourth of July weekend that celebrates the town's history in the most hands-on way possible.

The event features reenactments of a Native American village, a pioneer encampment, a Civil War hospital, a 1940s USO show, and a timeline parade that walks you through more than two centuries of local history. It's the kind of event where history stops being something you read about and starts being something you experience — and it draws crowds from all over the region every year.

For families with kids especially, Jonesborough Days is one of those events that sticks. It's hard to be bored when history is happening right in front of you.

Just Down the Road on Highway 107

If you're coming from Jonesborough and heading west on Highway 107 toward Chuckey, you'll pass us on the right in about ten minutes — right across from Roadrunner Markets, just past Jackson Bridge. We're not part of the historic district, but we are part of the same community.

A lot of folks who come to the storytelling festival in October need somewhere nearby to store their camper or RV while they're in town for the weekend. Others are moving to the area — drawn here by the history, the community, the pace of life — and need temporary storage while they get settled. We handle both, and everything in between.

Month-to-month, no deposits, no contracts. Drive-up 10×20 units and outdoor RV and camper storage. Reserve online and get your gate code the same day. Simple — the way it should be.

Need Storage Near Jonesborough?

We're ten minutes west on Highway 107 in Chuckey. Clean units, 24/7 access, locally owned. No contracts, no deposits.