Good morning, Cookeville. ☀️

Spring is officially doing its thing, and this week's issue is loaded.

Cane Creek Park just got 31 acres bigger…

Caliber Collision is 15 years deep into feeding this community, and they're asking for backup…

A Baltimore artist is opening a solo show at the Fiddlehead this Saturday night…

…and the Strawberry Festival is this weekend in Crossville. Yes, there will be Buc-ee's brisket involved.

Oh, and 4 covered storage spots in Baxter just opened up. 8 minutes from the dock.

Let's get into it.

The Dogwood Park fountain is back on ⛲

Small thing, big feeling. The City of Cookeville officially turned on the Dogwood Park fountain for the 2026 spring and summer season. If you've driven past Dogwood lately and felt like something was different, that's it. The fountain running again is basically Cookeville's unofficial "spring has arrived" announcement. Go take a walk. It's a good week for it.

👉 cookeville-tn.gov

Cane Creek Park just got a whole lot bigger 🌳

Cookeville quietly made a major move for outdoor enthusiasts last week. The City of Cookeville Department of Leisure Services officially celebrated the ribbon cutting of the Cowan Addition at Meadow View in Cane Creek Park on Monday, April 6. The addition, 31 acres purchased from longtime park neighbors Joel and Dorothy Cowan, extends from the park's southern boundary all the way to Buffalo Valley Road.

What does that mean for you? More trails, more parking, more picnic space, and potentially the park's first-ever continuous 5K loop. The city had been working toward this expansion for years. It finally happened.

If you haven't walked Cane Creek lately, this is your sign. 🚶

👉 Cane Creek Park

Summer Camp registration opens THIS TUESDAY 🏕️

Parents, mark April 15 on the fridge. The City of Cookeville Athletics opens registration for its 2026 Summer Camps on Tuesday, April 15. Camps are open to children of all ages and skill levels. Spots fill fast. Check cookeville-tn.gov for details the moment the portal opens.

👉 cookeville-tn.gov

Pickleball is coming to Cane Creek 🏓

The fastest-growing sport in America is landing at Cane Creek Gymnasium this May. The City of Cookeville is offering Pickleball Clinics designed as a fun, welcoming entry point for all skill levels. Whether you've never held a paddle or you're already a regular, this is a solid way to meet people and get moving.

👉 Details and registration

Caliber Collision wants to Refuel Cookeville 🥫

This week marks the start of Caliber Collision's 15th Annual Community Food Drive, and they're calling on local businesses to join them. Running from now through May 29, Caliber is collecting both monetary and nonperishable food donations, with every single dollar and can staying right here in Cookeville.

Here's the number worth knowing: $5 can provide up to 25 meals. That's not a typo.

Caliber is hoping other local businesses will join in. Because as they put it, teamwork makes the dream work. If your business wants to be part of the effort, reach out to them directly. If you just want to drop off a donation, no amount is too small.

Fifteen years of doing this says something about a business. 👏

👉 Caliber Collision Cookeville

📅 Saturday, April 18 | 10 AM – 4 PM (Central) 📍 1398 Livingston Rd, Crossville, TN 38555 (Upper Cumberland Fairgrounds)

This is the one, folks. 🍓

The Annual Upper Cumberland Strawberry Festival returns to the fairgrounds in Crossville this Saturday, and organizers say this is shaping up to be the BIGGEST year yet. Thousands are expected to show up. Honestly, it's not hard to see why.

Here's what you get for $5 (kids 12 & under FREE):

A note: Admission is cash only. Hit the ATM before you go. Parking is free.

It's a perfect family Saturday. Load up the crew, grab some strawberry jam to bring home to your neighbors, and make a day of it in Crossville. 🚗 Oh, and don't forget to stop at Buc-ee's on the way and stock up on fudge, jerky, and fresh hot brisket. You're basically obligated at this point. 🫎

👉 centerhillevents.com

These go fast every season. If you need a spot, now's the time.

Hide and Go Seek Storage is a private facility in Baxter with just 4 units available. 30-foot covered units with 12.5-ft wide, 12-ft tall doors for $99/month. Your boat, RV, or extra vehicle rolls in easy, and each unit has a built-in outlet so you can keep your boat charged and ready to go.

No climate control markup. No surprises. Just covered, secure storage 11 minutes from the dock.

Private facility. Limited spots. Once they're gone, they're gone.

👉 Claim your spot →

Here's the truth nobody tells you: mid-April in Putnam County is your planting sweet spot. Soil temps are consistently above 50°F, the frost risk is basically behind us, and we're sitting right in the window before summer heat makes establishment harder.

If you've been meaning to start or expand a home garden, here's your quick-hit guide for this week:

🍅 Tomatoes and peppers. Safe to transplant outdoors now. Pick a spot with at least 6 hours of full sun. Water at the base, not the leaves.

🌸 Native wildflowers. Tennessee's native plants like black-eyed Susan, purple coneflower, and wild bergamot can go in the ground this week. They establish well in April and will reward you with blooms all summer and pollinator traffic all season.

🌿 Herbs. Basil, thyme, rosemary, and oregano all do well in containers or raised beds. Start them now and you'll be cutting herbs by late May.

Pro tip from the Plateau: Cane Creek Park's pollinator fields are a free, always-available reference for what native plants thrive in this exact climate. Take a walk, see what's blooming, and take note of what you want in your yard.

👉 Cane Creek Park

Opening Night: Saturday, April 18 | 6–8 PM | The Silver Fern, 46 W Broad St

This Saturday you've got a genuinely compelling reason to have an evening out. The Fiddlehead Gallery inside The Silver Fern is hosting the opening reception of "Ways of the World", a solo exhibition by Cookeville-based painter and tattooer Michael David Ballard.

Michael came to Cookeville from Baltimore. He works in a mixed media of liquid acrylic, ink, pencil, and watercolor, an approach rooted in both American and Japanese tattoo traditions that results in work that feels immediately distinctive. Bold, layered, and deeply considered.

"Ways of the World" will feature both original paintings and artist prints, all on view and for sale. If you've admired the craft behind fine tattoo art but never thought of it as gallery-worthy, this show will change your mind fast.

Opening night is free. The exhibition runs through May 30, so you'll have plenty of time to bring a friend back for a second look. 🎨

👉 The Silver Fern

Tree Art | Dogwood Park

Someone in Cookeville turned a tree into a canvas, and honestly, we're here for it. This week's photo of the day comes straight from Dogwood Park, where nature and a little creativity collided in the best way.

Have a photo worth sharing with the Upper Cumberland? Hit reply and send it our way. We feature the best shots right here every week. 🌳

The Town That Built Itself on a Plateau

Long before the interstates, before Tennessee Tech, before any of the strip development along Jefferson Avenue, Cookeville was a small plateau town with a stubborn sense of purpose.

Putnam County was formed in 1842, carved out of White, Overton, DeKalb, and Jackson Counties. Cookeville was named the county seat in 1854, a deliberate choice to center commerce and government on the high ground of the Cumberland Plateau rather than in the creek valleys below.

The early settlers who chose this place weren't fools. The plateau offered mild summers, abundant timber, and land that rewarded people willing to work it. What it didn't offer was easy access to anything. For the first several decades, Cookeville was genuinely remote, connected to the outside world primarily by word of mouth and wagon roads that turned to mud in winter.

That isolation shaped a particular kind of community: self-reliant, resourceful, and fiercely attached to place. Neighbors helped neighbors not out of sentiment but out of necessity. The church was the community center. The courthouse was the civic anchor.

The world eventually caught up with Cookeville. The railroad came, then the university, then the hospitals and highways. But the ethos that developed in those early plateau years never fully left. You can still feel it when people show up for each other here, at a ribbon cutting for a park expansion, at a food drive that's been running for 15 years straight, at a strawberry festival in Crossville on a Saturday afternoon.

Some things from 1854 stuck. 🗺️

👉 Cookeville History Museum

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Thanks for reading the whole thing. Have an incredible week!