Manchester: Musical majesty and natural splendor

For most of the year, Manchester seems like just another place for motorists to grab gas and a bite to eat on the asphalt ribbon of I-24 on their way to Nashville. With about 10,000 residents, it doesn’t even break into the list of the state’s most populous towns.

Every June since 2002, however, this otherwise slumbering community has ballooned in size and significance for three days as the host of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. From the time gates open until the last note fades into the whisper of an echo, Manchester becomes pretty much the center of the universe for music lovers.

With the arrival of the festival, Manchester’s population swells tenfold as fans trek there, many from hundreds of miles away, to jam out at an event that Rolling Stone magazine once included on a list of “50 Moments that Changed Rock & Roll.” Set on a sprawling, 700-acre farm, the event transforms Manchester from a population non-starter into Tennessee’s seventh-largest city.

But while Bonnaroo is the most feathery plume in Manchester’s hat – and the inroad for an estimated $50 million to the statewide and local economy, according to a 2013 report – there are reasons to visit even when the stages are dark. Visitors can still find plenty to do, from grabbing a bite to eat to working up a sweat at a 69,000-square-foot recreation center to rambling through the historic and natural splendor of Old Stone Fort Archaeological Park and May Prairie.

Gavin Welch, left, and Eddie Burgard, volunteers from Chapel Hill, NC, take a photo of the main stage as thousands of workers prepare the Bonnaroo site Wednesday the day before gates open in Manchester, Tenn. Bonnaroo is a four-day multi-stage camping music festival held in a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee.