[5] McNairy County is the location of the Coon Creek Science Center, a notable fossil site that preserves Late Cretaceous marine shells and vertebrate remains (such as mosasaurs).

Carl Perkins made the first recordings of his career in the home studio of Stanton Littlejohn at Eastview, Tennessee.

In Tennessee's Ordinance of Secession referendum on June 8, 1861, McNairy County voted to secede by a margin of 1,318 to 586.

[8] However, earlier on February 9, 1861, McNairy County voters had voted against holding a secession convention by a margin of 916 to 811.

The Trantham School, listed on the 1940 census, operated from 1922 through 1948, with a single teacher serving grades 1 through 8.

He gained prominence for his fight against illegal distilleries, bootleggers, gambling establishments, and corruption in the county.

His story has been made famous in the Walking Tall series of movies starring Joe Don Baker, Bo Svenson, Brian Dennehy, and Dwayne Johnson, and in numerous documentaries and books.

[13][14] In 2008, Tom Evans, a former reporter and photographer for the Independent Appeal, formed his own weekly newspaper, The McNairy County News.

[27][28] A McNairy County school board member was charged with choking his teen co-worker in May 2023.

McNairy County's position on Route 64 places it on the historic Lee Highway, which stretches from New York to San Francisco.

McNairy County is the site of 5,000-acre (20 km2) Big Hill Pond State Park, which is forested with timberland and hardwood bottomland.

The county is also the location of the Coon Creek Science Center,[39] a notable fossil site, located in Leapwood over the Coon Creek Formation, which preserves Late Cretaceous marine shells and vertebrate remains (such as mosasaurs) left there 70 million years ago.

Research in the 1910s suggested that Republicanism in Southern states tended to be associated with areas having less productive soils.