July 16, 2026
Something quiet has happened between the river and College Street over the past twelve months. The pieces that used to feel scattered around downtown, a distillery on Progress Drive, a museum still under construction outside the post, an arena with a half-filled calendar, have snapped into place as a walkable summer district. You can now spend a Saturday moving from a museum to a mural walk to a distillery patio to a tribute concert without moving your car. That wasn't true in 2024. This is the guide for people who already live here and want to know what's actually different.
The clearest signal that downtown has shifted is where Leatherwood Distillery landed after outgrowing its Progress Drive space in spring 2026, moving into a new distilling space in the heart of downtown Clarksville. The new address is 119 College Street, and it puts the tasting room within a short walk of Shelby's Trio and directly across from the DoubleTree.
The site is a purpose-built venue, not a repurposed storefront. Early planning documents described an 8,423-square-foot building on about 1.32 acres, with roughly 200 seats, a tasting room, two open patio areas, an open deck and a party room, the distillery itself on the lower level alongside product storage, and exterior pavilions, walking trails and benches. If you knew the old Progress Drive location, this is a different scale of operation.
The backstory still matters to a lot of residents here. Founder Andy Lang refined his distilling near Fort Campbell and retired in Clarksville after 25 years of military service, and Leatherwood remains veteran-owned. The whiskeys are made using the Lincoln County Process, slowly filtered through a thick bed of sugar maple charcoal before touching a barrel. Worth ordering a flight for once if you've only ever grabbed a bottle at Mulligans.
If you've lived in Clarksville for any length of time, you know the frustration of trying to send an out-of-town guest to see anything related to the 101st. Without a military ID, most of the good history sat behind the gate.
That changed in May. The 50,000-square-foot Tennessee Wings of Liberty Museum opened as the second-largest museum in the U.S. Army's museum enterprise, telling the story of Fort Campbell's 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and special forces units from World War II forward, located outside the post's gates, accessible without a military ID, and with free admission.
For a resident, three things matter about that description. It is free, it is outside the wire, and it is large enough to fill an afternoon rather than an hour. Pair it with dinner downtown and you have a legitimate plan for visiting parents, in-laws, or a friend flying in through BNA who wants to understand why you live here.
Beachaven Vineyards & Winery isn't downtown, it's out on Dunlop Lane, but it functions as a downtown-adjacent anchor for summer weekends. This year is its fortieth.
Tennessee's oldest single-family-owned winery turns 40 in 2026, with special events throughout the year, a limited-release collection featuring the same wine harvested from four different years available in limited quantities, wine slushies back for the summer, and live music every weekend. The Friday-Saturday-Sunday schedule runs 4-7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2-5 p.m. Sundays at Beachaven Vineyards & Winery, 1100 Dunlop Lane.
The reason to mention this alongside the downtown changes is timing. A wine slushie at Beachaven at 3 p.m. and a concert at Downtown Commons at 7 p.m. is a real Saturday now in a way it wasn't when the arena was still ramping up and Leatherwood was fifteen minutes away on Progress Drive.
The First Street Parking Garage is not where anyone expects to find art. That is exactly why the project is worth a detour.
Twenty local artists painted 16 stairwell landings in the city's First Street Parking Garage in June, collectively titled Color in Concrete, with the 9-by-9-foot works transforming the concrete walls into a public art gallery. Take the stairs, not the elevator. The whole loop takes maybe twenty minutes if you actually look, and it pairs naturally with a First Thursday visit.
Speaking of which, if you haven't been in a while, First Thursday Art Walk runs 5-8 p.m. in downtown Clarksville, a free self-guided tour that combines visual art, live music, engaging events and more, rain or shine. It has grown quietly. The murals fold in without anyone needing to plan around them.
If you've been going to a single market on Saturday mornings, you're missing most of what's happening now. Clarksville has open-air markets throughout the city, with festivities downtown each Saturday and first Sunday, at Old Glory Distilling on Thursday evenings, plus other neighborhood markets on Monday and Friday evenings, offering fresh-baked breads, jewelry, lawn art, hand-made popsicles, produce and plants. The Thursday-evening Old Glory market in particular is the one most longtime residents I talk to still haven't tried.
The F&M Bank Arena calendar has thinned to a small number of high-signal events for the rest of summer and early fall, which honestly makes it easier to plan around. Worth knowing:
The Downtown Commons calendar is the more locally texture-rich list. At Downtown Commons, 215 Legion St., 7-10 p.m. Friday, Aug. 21, Eagles Project performing as an Eagles tribute, with food trucks present. Then at Downtown Commons, 215 Legion St., 7-10 p.m. Friday, Sept. 18, Pandora's Box performing as an Aerosmith tribute, with food trucks present. Free concerts, walkable from a Leatherwood cocktail, easy to stack into a night.
Movies on the lawn are also back at the Commons. Montgomery County Parks and Recreation presents Wicked at Downtown Commons on Saturday, Aug. 22, and Wicked for Good on Saturday, Aug. 29, both 7:30 p.m. with lawn chairs and blankets welcome and food available for purchase.
Put the pieces together and a real summer week in downtown Clarksville looks like this. A First Thursday walk that now includes a garage-stairwell mural detour. A Thursday-evening market at Old Glory. A Friday tribute concert on the Commons lawn. A Saturday split between the Wings of Liberty Museum in the morning and Beachaven's live music window in the afternoon. A Leatherwood flight before dinner. A movie or a rodeo to close out.
Two years ago none of that stitched together. Leatherwood was fifteen minutes off. The arena calendar was still filling in. The museum was a rendering. The murals didn't exist. The winery didn't have four decades of story to sell. In 2026 all five sit inside the same weekend, and most of them are free.
That is the change worth noting. Not any one opening, but the fact that downtown finally rewards the person who already lives here and wants a plan that doesn't require getting in the car between stops.
If you're thinking about how your own block fits into what downtown has become, or you have friends and family who keep asking whether Clarksville is worth the move after visiting, Candi Borck is happy to talk through the market with the same calm, step-by-step approach she brings to every client. Start your move with a calm plan. Call or message Candi today.
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