Webb Hotel ca.1910

Uncle Dave Macon, who entertained guests here, was born in Warren County in 1870. He learned showmanship from vaudeville performers who boarded at his parents' Nashville rooming house, and in 1926 he joined WSM's Grand Ole Opry as its first vocalist. His mix of banjo music and homespun humor drew fans who recognized themselves in his songs and stories about working-class people. That repertoire preserves an important part of the changing South, and the hotel's guests heard it in person.

What the plaque says

Webb Hotel ca.1910 The circa 1910 Webb Hotel served early commercial lodging in Rock Island, Tennessee. Great Falls Dam, which opened in 1917, resulted in making the community one of Tennessee's premier resort towns. Sunday dinners, the floating Collins River swimming pool, and entertainment by Uncle Dave Macon of country music fame made for enjoyable stays at the Craftsman style hotel. Architectural features include crab orchard sandstone, cedar shakes, wide eaves, columns and large windows. The Webb Hotel was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on March 27, 2020.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rock Island State Park — 1.7 mi
  A park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.
• Burgess Falls State Park — 17 mi
  A day-use park on the Falling Water River, where a short trail passes three smaller falls on its way to a drop of more than 130 feet into a limestone gorge.
• Fall Creek Falls State Park — 18 mi
  A New Deal park on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, where Cane Creek has cut a gorge and a 256-foot waterfall drops into it.
• Savage Gulf State Park — 24 mi
  Roughly 19,000 acres of gorge and sandstone bluff on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, a state park of its own since 2022, with the Stone Door and a National Natural Landmark.

More markers nearby

• Joseph Terry — 0.3 mi
• Great Falls HP-Spencer 46-kv Transmission Line — 1.2 mi
• Forrest's Bivouac July 11, 1862 — 5.3 mi
• Burritt College — 9.2 mi