Historic Towne of Smithville
Although Smithville has existed as a community since the American Revolutionary War, most of the community remained very rural until the 1960s when the Smithville Towne Center, a tourist attraction containing over 80 shops, opened. Today it is a popular shopping, dining and tourist destination.
Everyone Loves Smithville and the Smithville Inn
The original Smithville Inn was built in 1787 by James Baremore. It was just one room on a well –traveled stagecoach route and it may not have been planned as an inn. But houses were few and far between in those days, and word of the Baremore’s hospitality spread until inn keeping became their living.
His family continued to operate the Inn through the years and it had grown to six times its original size, and its fame seemed permanently established. Yet sometime after the turn of the twentieth century, it was abandoned.
In 1949, the Inn was rediscovered. Its long and colorful past was carefully studied, and in 1952 a local couple purchased the Inn and seven acres of property, restoring the structure and opening it in 1952 as a 42-seat restaurant.
