WARTBURG, Tenn. — Morgan County has a new gathering place as of Friday, which was once its old gathering place.
Tanner's Historic Cafe held its grand opening on Friday and people flocked to the restaurant to hang out and share some of the memories they made with their families in the historic building.
The building was established in 1923 as "Tanners Cafe and Drug Store," created by John Everett and Maud Tanner. She was a teacher in the area who opened the building and as the cafe grew, so did the Tanner family, according to the Morgan County Tourism Alliance.
In the following years, the building would be renovated and transformed into a variety of different stores. It became a general store, a bookstore, and briefly reopened as a coffee shop before Charles Tanner transferred the Wartburg community icon to the Morgan County Tourism Alliance in December 2019, according to officials.
It was also briefly abandoned, before being restored and being added to The National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee.
"Tanners will be a good place for the hikers to meet together or stop and rest as they come off the Cumberland Trail or any of the other trails we have in the area," said one official with the Morgan County Tourism Alliance on social media.
The cafe also offers free Wi-Fi for visitors, as well as spots where hikers can charge their devices.
The grand opening event saw several people fill back into the store, bringing the Wartburg community together again and packing together at tables. Culinary students from the Morgan County Career and Technical Center helped prepare and serve food during the event.
"I could not be more appreciative, or more honored, to be a part of the grand opening," said one teacher from the center.
Representative Chuck Fleishmann (R - 3rd District) also visited the store ahead of the grand opening. He sampled some of the cafe's chocolate milkshakes.
The cafe offers chicken salad sandwiches, pimento cheese sandwiches, grilled cheese paninis, grilled ham and cheese paninis, soups, hot dogs, brats, ice cream sundaes and coffee. The cafe is scheduled to be open from Thursday through Sunday weekly.
From Thursday through Saturday, it will be open from 10 a.m. through 4 p.m. and it will be open from 12 p.m. through 4 p.m. on Sundays.
"We do this, not for us, but for our future generations and that's what it's all about," said Mark Keck on social media, an organizer at the grand opening.
