About The Grove

Our name isn't an invention — it's an inheritance. Oak Grove is one of the old rural communities of Lewis County, Tennessee, named the plain way country places used to be named: for the stand of oaks where folks gathered. Like so many communities in these hills, it grew up as a farming settlement in the 1800s — a crossroads where a church, a school, and a general store served the families working the surrounding ridges and hollows.

Lewis County itself was carved out in 1843 and named for Meriwether Lewis, the famous explorer of the Lewis & Clark expedition, who died on the old Natchez Trace just a few miles from here in 1809 — his monument and gravesite remain one of the area's most visited places. The county seat, Hohenwald, was settled largely by Swiss and German immigrants in the late 1800s; the name means “high forest,” and one look at the countryside tells you why it stuck.

Life out here has always followed the land — timber and small farms on the ridges, and the Buffalo River winding below, Tennessee's longest free-flowing river. Long before anyone called it recreation, folks were fishing its shoals and cooling off on its gravel bars. The country store was the center of it all: part supply post, part post office, part front porch for the whole community.

The Grove carries that tradition forward. We built this place to be what the old crossroads stores were — somewhere to stock up, catch up, and set out from. Whether you're camping the night, paddling the river, or just passing through on the Trace, we're proud to keep a little of Oak Grove's history alive, one cold drink at a time.