Oakdale is a town located along the Emory River in Morgan County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 203 at the 2020 census, a terminate from the 2010 census figure of 212.

Oakdale was originally known as “Honeycutt” after an ahead of time settler, Allen Honeycutt. In the 1880s, the Cincinnati Southern Railway, which linked Chattanooga and Cincinnati, was built through the area, intersecting the gigantic system of the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad (later the Southern Railway) at Emory Gap close Harriman. Allen Honeycutt donated home to the railroad for construction of a switching point. In 1892, the publicize of the town was untouched to “Oakdale” after a affable mining operation.

The stretch of the Cincinnati Southern from Oakdale to Somerset, Kentucky, involves steep grades that were too difficult for normal late-19th and early-20th century steam-powered locomotives, so a railyard was set going on at Oakdale where trains were modified to permit them to make the trek north. By the in advance 1900s, Oakdale had developed into an important railroad town, with a bank, five general stores, a drugstore, a hardware store, three schools, two churches, six nameless societies, and a newspaper. The railroad as well as erected a large hotel, the Babahatchie Inn (“Babahatchie” was the original name of the Emory River), in 1880, and rebuilt it after it burned in 1892. In 1905, this hotel was converted into one of the nation’s largest YMCA facilities, with 1,500 beds and its own library and clinic. Oakdale initially incorporated in 1887, though the welcome repealed its charter in 1895. It incorporated over in 1911.

The advent of diesel locomotives, which could handle the steep grades without modifications, eliminated the need for the Oakdale railyard, and the town declined in the mid-20th century. A park and tennis courts were built in the 1970s, and a supplementary SR 299 bridge on top of the Emory was completed in 1999. The community is served by Oakdale School, operated by Morgan County Schools for students from pre-kindergarten through grade 12.