Herbie Town

Yesterday, my Dad and I headed to Crockett County near Alamo, Tennessee, to look for the graves of some of our Johnson ancestors. We found what we were looking for, and I’ll share more about that another day. But our genealogy road trip also gave us an opportunity to stop by a place called Herbie Town.

Part art installation, part Western movie set and part museum of West Tennessee history, Herbie Town sits at 778 Humboldt Gibson Wells Road in Humboldt, Tennessee.

Herbert Adams and his wife, Marie,” created Herbie Town in their backyard. Herbert loves family, friends, carpentry and making people laugh, so, after he retired, he turned those interests into a homemade Western town filled with antiques, vintage artifacts. If Alice fell down the rabbit hole and woke up in a John Wayne movie, this is what she would find.

Herbert told Tennessee Crossroads he spent about 40 years building Herbie Town, adding to it “off and on” because he loved old buildings, old lumber, barns and vacant houses. He also understood something important about history: if someone does not gather up old things, they disappear.

That idea explains the place. Herbie Town does not preserve history behind glass. It lets history lean against fences, hang from rafters, creak under your feet and grab your attention when you least expect it.

One moment you look at an antique tool. The next moment you realize Herbert has turned it into whimsical furniture, a sign, a joke or something that probably does not work but somehow looks like it might.

Before retirement, Herbert worked in construction, and those skills helped him build a whole village where he could serve as mayor, sheriff, fire chief, judge and anything else the town required.

The town draws visitors, too. Herbert told my farher and me that church groups, seniors, families and visitors from several states find their way there. People come because they had heard about it from someone else, which seems like the only proper way to find Herbie Town.

We went looking for family history in Crockett County and found it. But along the way, we also found another kind of history: one man’s handmade town, filled with artifacts, creativity and the kind of West Tennessee spirit that deserves to be remembered.

UPDATE: After Herbert died in 2019 and Marie followed in 2020, their son, David Lynn Adams, helped keep the place alive as a private, by-appointment attraction and local gathering place. When David died in 2025, his own obituary said the family received friends at Herbie Town, showing that Herbert’s handmade village remained part of the Adams family’s life and the community’s memory long after its builder was gone.