Bell Buckle’s been busy this past week. With the annual craft fair, the Big Dog Backyard Ultra Race, and The Webb School’s 150th anniversary, visitors from quite literally around the word have walked through the timeless downtown porches and crossed over the railroad tracks that once paved the way for Bell Buckle’s prosperity.  

Beneath the new, artistic charm of Bell Buckle is a 150-year-old-town with a history of growth and decline.  

Bell Buckle Mayor and Fire Chief Ronnie Lokey has been involved with the town since 1980. He’ll readily call himself a “Bell Buck-lian” since he moved to the half-mile long town from Rutherford when he was just three years old.  

“If you’ve been here long enough, the roots are here—sort of makes you part of the town,” he said.  

Lokey was once a teenage paper boy for the town. It was the way he learned the ins-and-outs of town and more importantly about its people.  

“When I was growing up, a lot of these stores were occupied when I was running around as a youngster...a lot of mom-and-pop type situations, had two or three old grocery stores,” Mayor Lokey recalled. “I remember where Billy Phillip’s General Store is, Mr. Padie run that store—dry goods, work clothes, things like that—and he was real sort of feisty older man. He got around.”  

The people are what has kept Lokey coming back Bell Buckle all the years. When Bell Buckle began, the town was mostly young families, farmers and shopkeepers. Today, many Bell Buckle residents are retirees, according to Lokey, as well as the Tennessee transplants from California.  

The Webb School, which was started in 1886 by the Webb brothers, has brought in a lot of young life to the town as well. That has grown since then and help crafted Bell Buckle into what it is today: a haven for the artisans.  

“About 15, 20 years ago the face of Bell Buckle started changing...and then they had the Renaissance of the arts and craft community,” said Mayor Lokey.  

Attracted to the slow and easy-going lifestyle, people come to escape the “rat race,” Lokey said. And they want to keep it that way. It may seem counterintuitive that a small town like Bell Buckle can somehow attract tens of thousands of visitors but remain at a population of around 500 as well as keep it “old-looking,” as Mayor Lokey described it. But, somehow, they do it.  

Maybe it’s in their roots...  

One of the most asked questions is how Bell Buckle got its name.  

Well, like may time-capsule towns, history becomes legend. But the story goes that the first settlers of the town came across a tree that had a bell and buckle either tied or carved into that tree.  

Where that tree was, Mayor Lokey was unsure. And whether it was a warning from the Indians, a mark from land surveyors, or a sign from God is still debated among the townsfolk.  

Still, what is known about Bell Buckle is that it was a prosperous stagecoach route and eventually railroad town that housed around 1,000 people at one time.  

It is considered officially founded by A.D. Fugitt in the mid-19th century, when the railroad came and migrated the town to its current location.  

“They say you can still see the ruts where the stagecoach ran. But I haven’t seen those,” the mayor said with a laugh. “They had passenger service on the rail and they would bring people in, and former Mayor Gene Strobel’s house was a hotel then. And they would stay at the hotel, and they would sell their wares around and get on the train and go to the next town.”  

The Great Depression changed the course of the town as many sought urban areas for work. But the remnants for that predepression era can be seen in the store fronts of downtown and even in a mysterious red brick spring house that’s said to be the oldest building in town, located behind the Hinkle Hill Bed and Breakfast.  

A couple fires and the move of the U.S. Post Office from what is now the Bell Buckle Café to across the tracks have all changed the face of one of Tennessee’s best small towns.  

But one thing is for sure: the people are what make the town.  

“It’s changed over the last 20 years or so. And I used to know everybody in town. I knew who lived in every house,” Mayor Lokey said.  

While serving with the fire department, he said, “When we had a call, I knew who it was, before we got the firetruck out. And that’s a disadvantage of knowing who you’re going to see because sometimes it hurts.”  

A tear was brought to his eye as he recalled this, and anybody who knows him could see the compassion he had, and has, for the people of Bell Buckle.  

Present and future  

The small town, like many others, does have it in the books to annex land to increase the size—an acre-size piece of property that will serve as a potential building site.  

And because of its size, Bell Buckle relies on grants for major projects. For example, the town just received a grant to do the alley way behind the main downtown front, to take a road through it and spruce it up, so that way both the front and back of the stores are developed, Mayor Lokey said.  

The historical commission is also seeking to do a survey and catalogue all the older houses in town for preservation, according to Mayor Lokey.  

The new Jenny Hunt Park and the new water tower at The Webb School are some other improvements that have been made. Water and sewer are also big items on the budget, Lokey said.  

“Just things to keep the town clean, sort of make it appealing to people to get off the interstate and drive six, seven miles to see what Bell Buckle’s all about,” he said.