Antioch Travel Guide

Named After Antioch First Baptist Church located at 2601 Una Antioch Pike. Antioch First Baptist Church was established in 1810. As recently as the 1960s Antioch was a small community catering to the needs of area farmers with amenities such as a feed mill. It was located on the banks of Mill Creek, a minor tributary of the Cumberland River that rises near Nolensville, Tennessee, several miles to the southeast. This area has become less important over time as zoning restrictions forbidding further development on a flood plain have limited the construction of more businesses in this area, which had started to become quite congested.

The presence of large quantities of affordable housing led to an influx of young families with children, greatly overtaxing the area's schools, which have been overcrowded for decades and remain so, despite an extensive construction program and the development of some private schools, largely church-affiliated. Large numbers of recent immigrants have also come to Antioch in the last two decades, attracted initially by the affordable housing and also by the presence of immigrant communities. Immigrants are predominantly from Southeast Asia and Latin America, but many are from other places.

The most important business concentration in Antioch is Hickory Hollow Mall, which opened in 1978 and has been renovated and expanded on several occasions since. It is a typical suburban shopping mall with large "anchor" stores such as Sears, Macys, and Dillards and of course many more smaller interior shops. A Walmart Supercenter, and many new shopping strip malls have also opened in the area attracting large-scale home builders such as Beazer and Centex Homes to construct many new subdivisions.

Starwood Amphitheatre, Nashville's former primary outdoor music venue, is located a few miles south of Antioch on the Rutherford County line. The amphitheatre was closed prior to the 2007 season.