The Warehouse Row Historic District runs along the riverfront south of downtown and preserves a collection of 19th and early 20th-century commercial and industrial buildings that once served the river trade. The brick warehouses — built to store goods arriving by steamboat and departing overland — have been selectively converted to restaurants, galleries, and shops, though the district retains enough of its original fabric to convey the scale and character of the steamboat economy.
The district is at its best on weekend evenings, when the restaurants and bars fill and the bluff setting above the river creates an atmosphere that the generic suburban sprawl of Highway 72 entirely lacks. Broadway, which runs through downtown and past the warehouse district toward the river, is worth walking end to end — the streetscape is intact enough to give a genuine sense of the 19th-century commercial town.