Collierville, TN

Collierville's Town Square works as a weekly stage as well as a preserved business district. Its storefronts, restaurants, gazebo, depot, railroad equipment, and shaded central lawn provide the setting for events that recur through much of the year. Fair on the Square has opened the summer season since 1976. Friday bluegrass and old-time music jams reached their 27th year in 2026 and continue through October. The three-day Sounds Like Collierville festival brought Americana performances and instrument workshops to the square in April. Thursday concerts continued through July 30, and free Shakespeare returns to the depot platform September 26. These are active uses of the old center: residents bring chairs to the same blocks where trains, merchants, and farm trade once concentrated the town's public business. The square occupies Collierville's post-Civil War town center.

Jesse Collier advertised 150 acres as the Town of Collier in 1836, and a relocated post office helped establish the name Collierville. Railroad construction through town in 1852 and 1853 turned the settlement into a regional trade point and later a Civil War target. Four skirmishes in 1863 largely destroyed the antebellum center. In 1866, Virginius Leake and Harrison Irby bought 90 acres north of the tracks, reserved land for a public square, and laid out business lots around it. That postwar street plan remains the commercial core, and the Collierville Historic District entered the National Register in 1990. Together, the depot, tracks, and square preserve a connected story of trade, destruction, rebuilding, and continued use within an active commercial setting.

Much of current working life takes place outside those old blocks. In 2025, FedEx and Carrier had Collierville's two largest listed workforces. Collierville Schools and town government followed, with hospital care, distribution, agricultural supply, security equipment, and consumer products also represented. FedEx's technology operations and Carrier's manufacturing plant add office, software, engineering, and production work to a place whose square can otherwise dominate an outsider's first impression. Large employers and newer commercial areas occupy sites beyond the square, while the historic center supports smaller shops, dining, services, tourism, and events. Collierville's current workplaces span logistics technology, manufacturing, public institutions, health care, regional distribution, and the small businesses of its nineteenth-century center. Local history is also used as a community resource. The Morton Museum occupies a Gothic Revival church begun near Main and Poplar in 1873.

The congregation used the building until 1992, the Morton family gave it to the town in 2008, and the museum opened in June 2012 with permanent and changing exhibitions, an art gallery, workshops, and free admission. Beyond the center, the Collierville Greenbelt System provides 18.58 miles of trails and connectors designed to link neighborhoods with parks, schools, and commercial areas. Museum exhibitions and workshops continue through the year, while the greenbelt carries walking and cycling trips among residential and public destinations. On a fair weekend the central lawn fills with booths; on an ordinary Friday evening, musicians still gather beside the depot and play across the tracks that first made Collierville a trade center.