Crossville celebrating its 125th anniversary Saturday with a free heritage festival featuring over 100 vendors, live music, and a massive car cruise-in throughout the downtown area.
Director of Tourism P.J. Barnes said the event focuses on celebrating the community at its roots. Barnes said the festival footprint spans from the historic Depot to the Palace Theater and includes various local organizations and nonprofits.
“Whenever we originally went into planning, a big part of what we wanted to prioritize was kind of just Crossville at the roots and celebrating who we are and what makes us who we are,” Barnes said. “Whether that’s the craft vendors, some of the goods, nonprofits, services, organizations that are going to be in downtown.”
Crossville officially incorporated in 1901. The community founded around 1856 as the seat for Cumberland County.
Barnes said the downtown amphitheater will serve as the central entertainment stage for the afternoon, featuring a diverse lineup of regional talent and civic demonstrations including Cherokee Hope and The Hosscats, Sweet T’s Cloggers, the Robby Myers Band, a patriotic presentation by Wreaths Across America and the Daughters of the American Revolution, a City Police Department K-9 Demonstration, and Nashville-based headliner Brother Maven.
“It’s all just going to be a blast and I think we truly have something for just about everybody,” Barnes said.
“We don’t really know, there’s actually not even a list of what vehicles are and are not going to be there, but a lot of it’s going to be vintage vehicles you’re looking at 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, sometime in that range, with some newer, nicer, I don’t say nicer, but some newer models that some people prefer,” Barnes said. “It’s just going to be a wide variety.”
Barnes said the Chamber of Commerce coordinated the planning in-house through partnerships with Explore Crossville and local government officials. A downtown business called Southern Spitfire assisted with the logistics for the amphitheater performances.
“We wanted to be as inclusive as possible,” Barnes said. “We’ve let all kinds of vendors and nonprofits and organizations set up, like I mentioned earlier, we wanted to make sure that anybody that had a car they wanted to show could come in and show that. We wanted to be completely free, anybody can pay for an event and festival, but it’s very rare you find one that’s free to attend nowadays and we wanted to make sure we could target everybody and have something for everybody and keeping that event free and our downtown businesses open is definitely going to speak a lot about the just the culture in Crossville and Cumberland County and how we approach things and wanting to include everybody.”
Barnes said the schedule begins at 10am with a reading of the Constitution at the Depot followed by a birthday cake competition at 11am.