Roasted Mar 23, 2026139 views139 pts
We're sorry. Actually, no we're not.
McEwen hosts a barbecue festival that bills itself as the World's Largest Pork Barbecue Cook-Off, which is basically like declaring yourself champion of your own made-up sport. They fire up the smokers once a year to prove they're relevant. The rest of the time, it's just another dot on the map where "church is about the only nightlife."
With about 1,700 people, McEwen has achieved the impossible: being too small to matter but too stubborn to disappear. "The people are nice but somehow still uninviting," which is small-town speak for "we smile at you but gossip about you at the post office."
U.S. Route 70 runs through town, making McEwen's biggest claim to fame being a place people drive through on their way to somewhere better. "A couple of restaurants, some auto/hardware businesses, and a grocery store" apparently counts as a thriving downtown district in Tennessee math.
The town is named for Robert Houston McEwen, a railroad-era landowner whose claim to immortality is having his name stamped on a dot along the tracks. That's the whole legacy: a guy owned some land, and now a town has to carry his name around forever whether it likes it or not.
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