How to Spend a Day in Red Boiling Springs and Lafayette, Tennessee
Once a bustling mineral resort town, Red Boiling Springs boasted nine hotels and 12 boarding houses in its heyday during the Jazz Age, regularly attracting wealthy vacationers like President Woodrow Wilson. That all changed when a 100-year flood swept through the area in 1969, decimating its buildings and tourism scene. Today, three hotels preserve that history, welcoming guests who want to experience a bygone era—as well as ghost hunters drawn to Red Boiling Springs’ haunted past.
Traveling through Middle Tennessee? Here is how to spend a day in Red Boiling Springs and Lafayette as you explore Macon County.
Morning in Red Boiling Springs
Macon County sits in the center of a region that attracts day and weekend visitors from Kentucky—Tompkinsville, Bowling Green and beyond—and nearby Tennessee towns of Carthage, Lebanon, and Gallatin. Its proximity to Nashville and location on the state border made it a great central hub for wellness tourism and “taking the waters,” a concept that exploded across the United States as people sought cures for everything from cancer to rheumatism to lethargy by drinking, bathing and otherwise utilizing mineralized waters found in various hotspots.
Dive into the mineral spring history of Red Boiling Springs
Red Boiling Springs and the surrounding region capitalized on wellness tourism by building hotels, resorts, circus attractions and other support operations along railroads that transited the sources. Visitors could take “red” or “black” water, so named because of what it did to silver coins, or be more adventurous and drink the “double and twist,” nicknamed for its effects on the person who consumed it.
These types of healing rituals fell out of favor in the early-1900’s as modern science caught up to the various maladies that Americans were experiencing, and fires and floods eventually removed almost all traces of the elegant spas that survived. In present day, the hamlet of Red Boiling Spring has a couple of covered bridges, and a pedestrian only bridge, that make great backdrops for photos, as well as sports fields, walking tracks, pools, a playground, and picnic areas. There is a small Quilt Square Walk downtown, and Macon County is part of the Upper Cumberland Driving Quilt Trail that includes Lafayette, with 25 locations featuring artwork on barns and other buildings within the region.
Wellness scene aside, Red Boiling Springs draws travelers looking to experience its haunted history—or those looking to celebrate the town’s deep roots in folk life via the annual Folk Medicine Festival on the first Saturday of each June. The Thomas House Hotel has been a vital part of the town’s DNA since its inception in 1890, but it has only been over the past decade or so that it has also become a hotspot for ghost tourism thanks to the presence of young Abigail, who is said to haunt the place. Throughout the year, Ghost Hunt Weekends offers packages that include lodging for two, as well as dinner, a guided ghost hunt, sensory equipment, a midnight snack buffet, and breakfast in the morning. Many participants become repeat visitors, returning to Thomas House Hotel over the years to get their spooky fix. Not into fright nights? This Red Boiling Springs B&B has 15 rooms that it rents out year-round, and they are chock full of seven generations’ worth of family antiques.
A few doors down, the largest of Red Boiling Springs’ hotels is The Donoho Hotel, which was built in 1916 and has 37 rooms to accommodate larger groups, in addition to a dining hall that can host 128 people. The hotel also has a concert venue behind the main building. Every second and fourth Sunday and most holidays, the Donoho serves a family-style lunch that is open to non-guests, as well.
Closer to downtown Red Boiling Springs, The Armour’s Hotel and Spa has the last remaining mineral bath in the area that’s open to the public and is undergoing an ongoing transformation as its new owners, Mark and Kally Efros, fill it with antiques that date back to the hotel’s 1924 roots—or older. Guests can book rooms or suites and utilize one of two side-by-side bathtubs that are then pumped full of healing mineral waters just like tourists used to do a century ago.
Explore Lafayette’s downtown
Macon County’s largest town and county seat, Lafayette is 12 miles west of Red Boiling Springs. Established prior to the Civil War in 1842, the town was named for French general and American Revolution hero Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette is part of the 95-mile-long TN52 Yard Sale each May, as well as the host of the three-day festival Hillbilly Days every June and our favorite time of the year the Macon County Fair during the first week in August.
Shop and eat in downtown Lafayette
Open for lunch on weekdays, Gibson’s Café is a Lafayette prized restaurant. Housed in the town’s original post office, this popular eatery is the brainchild of Miles and Ginger Gibson, who moved from Florida to Macon County to rehab the old building with original brick fired in Lafayette. Featured sandwiches and lunch items—like creamy broccoli and cheese soup, patty melts, reuben sandwiches, buffalo chicken wraps, and Philly cheesesteak subs—rotate through the menu regularly while Ginger’s dessert items like her bestselling carrot cake are always available. A pictorial history tells the town’s stories along the walls while the sounds of Miles’ vocals and guitar chords reverberate off the tin ceiling.
Also on the Lafayette Square, Southern Shave & Brew Co. is dedicated to getting locally roasted coffee into the cups of its patrons. In addition to selling baked goods and breakfast items, the Macon County coffee shop also specializes in shaved ice and creamy floats and provides a cozy space to catch up on work or log into Wi-Fi. A couple of doors down, 615 Boutique stocks women’s clothing, purses, and jewelry. Gallery 102 features local art including stained glass, pottery, books, poetry, jewelry, and paintings for sale to the public.
Off the Lafayette Square, Bro Co boutique specializes in “gear for guys” like fishing, hunting, and sporting equipment and novelty items such as beard wax. Lafayette Cinema shows blockbuster movies on its single screen every Friday, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday at 7pm and Sunday at 4pm. The Macon Drive-In operates seasonally offering new releases as well as some classic movies.
Get outdoors in Lafayette
Just a block off the square, Key Park is one of Lafayette’s three city parks and includes full RV hookups, as well as a playground, walking tracks, picnic areas, and pavilions. A mile from downtown Lafayette is one of Macon County’s biggest attractions, Winding Stairs Park, and Nature Trail. At the trailhead just beyond the parking lot, take a photo of the map, which outlines a 1.5-mile loop that leads past an overlook via the Cascades Trail. Over the course of a quarter mile, the Jacob’s Ladder staircase drops more than 200 feet into a deep gorge, the steep limestone walls of which are carved out by cascading streams that form the headwaters of Goose Creek.
If you have not gotten enough steps in already, Winding Stairs Park offers additional hiking options via the 0.5-mile Red Oak Trail and the 1.7-mile Milk Pail Trail. Again, keep a photo of the trail map handy as directions along the walking paths are not well-marked. If you are traveling with your own bike, you will also want to plan a stop at Peddlers Ridge, a mountain bike trail in Lafayette on your way out of Macon County.