The 18 Best Swimming Holes in Tennessee

The Cove at Concord Park gives Knoxville something rare: an in-town lake to swim in, at a county-maintained sand beach on Fort Loudoun Lake off South Northshore Drive. It is part of the roughly 500-acre Concord Park complex in west Knoxville, so a swim pairs easily with the paved greenways, fishing spots, and paddling that surround it.

The beach suits families and casual lake swimmers rather than anyone chasing whitewater or a backcountry swimming hole. In season, River Sports runs a rental operation right at the Cove, so you can grab a paddleboard or kayak and explore the same water you have been swimming in. The cove sits next to Concord Marina and a boat launch, so keep kids clear of the boat traffic.

Anderson Road is the closest thing Nashville has to a proper lake beach day without leaving town: a Corps of Engineers day-use area on J. Percy Priest Lake with an official designated swim beach whose sandy shoreline runs roughly 1,000 feet. The water is calm and lake-typical with minimal current, which makes it an easy swimming hole for families and casual swimmers.

A regional guide describes a mostly sandy bottom underfoot, and the water is generally reported as mostly clear. There's no lifeguard, and the beach sits next to a boat launch, so keep your head up around the ramp. Weekdays beat weekends here if you want space on the sand.

Blue Hole Falls is the kind of swimming hole people drive out of their way for: a multi-tiered waterfall on Mill Creek in the Cherokee National Forest, dropping into a plunge pool about 15 feet deep and 40 feet wide. The spring-fed water is cold and exceptionally clear, shifting between turquoise, emerald, and blue depending on the light, and you can often see straight down to the rocky bottom.

A rope swing has hung at the pool, and shallower wadeable sections below the main pool give less confident swimmers somewhere to cool off. Sources warn against jumping though, since submerged rocks and uneven depth make it risky. It fills up fast on summer weekends, so weekday mornings are the move.

Chilhowee Recreation Area sits on top of Chilhowee Mountain in Cherokee National Forest, and the drive up the winding forest road alone is worth something, with overlooks down to Parksville Lake. The swimming hole at the top is McKamy Lake, a 7-acre lake the Civilian Conservation Corps built in the late 1930s, with an official sand swim beach on its shore.

Because only non-gasoline boats are allowed, the water stays calm, which makes this a family lake rather than an open-water challenge. The Forest Service is clear that there is no lifeguard and swimming is at your own risk. Around the lake you also get roughly 25 miles of trails, including the easy 1.5-mile walk to Benton Falls.

Mac Point Beach sits on a small peninsula jutting into Parksville Lake, a roughly 1,930-acre TVA reservoir ringed by the forested ridges of Cherokee National Forest. The Forest Service maintains a white-sand beach here with picnic tables and grills, which makes Parksville an easy lake to swim in, calm open reservoir water rather than the river current and falls the Ocoee corridor is famous for.

It is set up for casual, family-style day-use swimming rather than a wild hike-in hole, with a fishing pond and campground nearby. No lifeguards are documented, and the reservoir's water level swings roughly 9 feet through the year, which can leave drop-offs or submerged debris near shore in low-water periods, so supervise kids directly rather than assuming a guarded swim area.

Rock Creek Recreation Area has one of the more unusual swim spots in the Cherokee National Forest: a concrete swimming pond built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the early 1930s, fed directly by the flow of Rock Creek. The water stays cold even in late July, visitors report, and the fairly large pool draws a local crowd on hot days.

It sits in a forested cove at the foot of Unaka Mountain, about 3.5 miles east of Erwin, with a campground, picnic area, playground, and short trails around it. It is more organized swimming hole than wild one, though note there are no documented depth markers or lifeguards, and one reviewer admitted they could not tell how deep it was.

Indian Boundary Recreation Area gives you a designated swim beach on a 96-acre lake at about 1,560 feet, ringed by hardwood and pine forest in the South Zone of Cherokee National Forest. It is an official, developed lake to swim in rather than an informal swimming hole, with the beach kept separate from the campground's boat and fishing access.

The whole setup leans family: a volleyball court right on the beach, an ADA-accessible fishing pier nearby, and calm lake water instead of current. No lifeguard presence is confirmed, which is typical for Forest Service beaches, so adults still need to watch swimmers, especially near the boat ramp. A 3.2-mile trail circles the lake if you want to walk it off afterward.

Lock A Campground puts a swimming hole right at your campsite. This Army Corps of Engineers campground sits on the north bank of Cheatham Lake, the Cumberland River impoundment near Ashland City, and the adjoining Right Bank Recreation Area maintains an official sand swimming beach on the same water, roughly 30 minutes from Nashville.

The swimming itself is gentle, with a sand-beach entry onto flat lake water rather than a flowing river channel, and playgrounds sit right at the recreation area for the kids. There is no lifeguard, and the beach shares a working reservoir with boat ramps and waterskiers, so watch children near the boat traffic. The main season runs Memorial Day through Labor Day.

Melton Hill Dam Swimming Area is TVA's designated swim beach on the Clinch River near Lenoir City, and it costs nothing to use. The swim zone is roped off with buoys, and Tennessee boating regulations legally exclude all boats from it, so you get calm reservoir water without wake or traffic. Regulars say it stays pretty quiet during the week.

This is a casual wading and floating kind of swimming hole rather than a deep-water swim, with reports of clean water but some muddy patches along the shoreline entry. The surrounding TVA reservation adds picnic pavilions, paved roads for walking and cycling, two hiking trails, and a year-round campground with waterfront tent sites. Swim season runs May through October.

Pickwick Landing State Park covers more than 1,400 acres on Pickwick Lake, a Tennessee River reservoir at Pickwick Dam. The mapped point here is the park's full-service marina, but the swimming hole is really the park's three designated swim beaches, and they make this big reservoir a genuine lake to swim in.

Sandy Beach and Circle Beach sit in the day-use area, where visitors describe a wide, flat sandy shoreline with clear lake water, and a third beach waits across the lake near the Bruton Branch primitive camping area. There are no lifeguards at any of them, so you swim unsupervised. One more thing worth knowing: TVA has warned about deadly currents and undertow near Pickwick Dam itself, so keep your swimming to the beaches, not the dam tailwater.

Paint Creek is one of those Cherokee National Forest streams that does everything: Recreation.gov calls it a popular stream for swimming, wading, and fly fishing, and the small primitive campground sits right on its banks at about 1,760 feet. The real prize is a couple miles up Forest Road 41, where a visitor described the swimming hole below Dudley Falls as large and very pretty, deep enough for a rope swing.

The water runs cold and clear with a pretty green tint, the kind of trout-stocked mountain creek that feels fantastic in July. Kelly Falls up the same corridor is scenic too, but reaching it means a steep, slick embankment scramble, so most swimmers stick to Dudley. Wet rocks near the falls are extremely slippery, and this is bear country, so store food properly.

Backbone Rock is best known for the hole in the rock, a narrow 1901 railroad tunnel blasted through a spur ridge of Holston Mountain that locals bill as the shortest tunnel in the world. But the reason it makes this list is the water: Beaverdam Creek runs right alongside the recreation area at about 2,100 feet in the Cherokee National Forest, and Recreation.gov officially describes the creek here as a popular swimming area.

The creek doubles as stocked trout water, and the grounds hold a small drive-up campground and a historic CCC-era stone pavilion with a fireplace. It's a swimming hole with a lot of character packed into one bend of a mountain creek near the Virginia line.

Pleasant Grove is one of the official places to swim on Dale Hollow Lake, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers day-use area about 4 miles northeast of Celina. Dale Hollow has a regional reputation for exceptionally clear water, clear enough that scuba divers seek the lake out, so a swim here comes with better visibility than you get at most reservoirs.

This is open-water lake swimming from the shoreline rather than a roped-off beach, and the swimming hole shares the site with a boat ramp, so expect some boat traffic nearby. One heads-up on the drive: the Corps advises against trusting GPS for the final approach, so follow the signs from Route 53 instead.

Laguardo is a Corps of Engineers day-use area on Old Hickory Lake near Lebanon, about 7.5 miles from Nashville, and its sandy beach swimming area makes it one of the easiest lakes to swim in near the city. Old Hickory is a big Cumberland River reservoir, 22,500 acres with 440 miles of shoreline, and this wooded spot off Highway 109 North gives you a simple, official way into it.

Recreation.gov calls it a great day-trip destination for kids and families, with a playground on site to back that up. Just note the beach sits right next to a boat ramp and there's no lifeguard mentioned anywhere official, so keep young swimmers close.

Wartrace Creek Park is one of the sanctioned places to swim on Cordell Hull Lake, a 12,000-acre reservoir on the Cumberland River about 9 miles from Gainesboro. This is a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers day-use area with a designated swimming site right on the shoreline, near where Wartrace Creek meets the lake, so you get official swimming-hole access without any guesswork about whether you're allowed in the water.

The setup is simple: pay $5 at the entrance booth, park, and you're at the beach in a minute or two. The same fee covers the boat ramp, the group picnic shelter, and the playground. One thing to keep in mind with kids: the swim site sits near the boat ramp and the creek mouth, and there's no documentation of lifeguards or depth markers, so keep an eye on them.

Bumpus Mills Campground sits on the quiet, wooded upstream end of Lake Barkley in rural Stewart County, Tennessee, and campers here get a swimming hole steps from their sites. A short flat trail leads to a small onsite beach right on the reservoir shoreline, the kind of low-key spot campers describe as a nice little beach rather than a big developed swim complex.

This is unhurried lake swimming used mostly by campers and boaters, with the Bumpus Mills Marina right next door. The beach is unsupervised and sits close to the boat ramp and pontoon traffic, so keep young kids in view near the shoreline. The campground runs seasonally, roughly early May through early September.

Blue Hole Falls is the kind of swimming hole that rewards a little effort. A 9-foot waterfall on Little Fiery Gizzard Creek drops into a clear, turquoise plunge pool that Tennessee State Parks officially designates as swimmable under normal water conditions, which makes it one of the more reliable spots to get wet in Fiery Gizzard State Park. The water is cold and crystal clear, better for a bracing dip or a wade than laps, and how deep the pool runs depends on recent rainfall.

Getting there is half the experience. The falls sit along the roughly 2-mile Grundy Forest Day Loop, a trail that winds through a sandstone gorge past old-growth hemlocks, some reportedly over 300 years old. Summer is the main swimming season, though regulars note the creek stays cold year-round, so plan on a quick, refreshing plunge rather than a long soak.

Defeated Creek Day Use Area holds one of only three officially designated swim beaches on Cordell Hull Lake, a 12,000-acre Cumberland River reservoir winding 72 miles through the rolling hills of Middle Tennessee. The swimming happens in a roped-off beach zone on flat lake water, no current to fight, which is exactly what makes this swimming hole work so well for families.

Campers describe it as a private-feeling beach area, good for a relaxed lakeside weekend, and area swimmers name Cordell Hull among the clearer lakes near Nashville. One heads-up from a park ranger: the water runs pretty cold, at least into spring.