You can travel to the far reaches of the globe and not see and experience what we have in Kentucky. Hyperbole? No, it’s a fact.
There are too many to mention in one article but here are just a few:
Churchill Downs,
Louisville’s legendary race track, annually hosts the word’s most exciting two-minutes in sports…there’s only one
Kentucky Derby.
When the world thinks of Kentucky, images of horses grazing in rolling
bluegrass pastures come to mind. We are proud to be the Horse Capital of
the World, but there’s many more only ones in Kentucky.
There’s only one place where Abraham Lincoln was born and a replica of his family’s log cabin is preserved at the
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park near
Hodgenville.
There’s only one
National Corvette Museum, in
Bowling Green,
where you can see more than 70 vintage Vettes, America’s sports car.
You can also tour the only manufacturing plant for the Chevrolet
Corvette.
From Colonel Harland Sanders’ perfecting his secret recipe for fried chicken in
Corbin to the
Kentucky Horse Park in
Lexington -- the world’s only park devoted to man’s relationship with the horse -- the Commonwealth is full of unparalleled places.
There’s only one
Mammoth Cave National Park.
Visitors to the park can tour some of the more than 390 miles of
charted caves and explore above ground this 50,000 acres World Heritage
Site.
Cumberland Falls, the Niagara of the South, is the only place in the western hemisphere where you regularly can see a moonbow.
At
Cumberland Gap National Historic Park,
follow the footsteps of Daniel Boone and feel the exhilaration of the
pioneers as they crossed the mountains and headed west into uncharted
territory nearly 250 years ago.
Tour the
Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory, the only place where the official bat of Major League Baseball is manufactured.
Besides Abraham Lincoln, the commonwealth is the birthplace of world
champion boxer and humanitarian Muhammad Ali; the father of bluegrass
music, Bill Monroe; and a slew of country music artists including
Loretta Lynn, the Judds, Billy Ray Cyrus, Patty Loveless and Dwight
Yoakam. For inspiration, visit the
Ali Center in Louisville and travel U.S. 23 – the
Country Music Highway – in eastern Kentucky, along which many country performers were born.
Kentuckians have made good in Hollywood as well. D.W. Griffith, the father of American cinema, was born and is buried in
La Grange.
George Clooney and his equally famous aunt Rosemary Clooney hail from
northern Kentucky, where you can visit her home and museum in
Augusta.
And let’s not forget bourbon. America’s native spirit was born in
Kentucky, which today produces 95 percent of the world’s supply. Tour
famous distilleries in central Kentucky’s Bourbon Country, where you can
learn about the distilling process and taste the product.
The more you learn about these unique attractions, the more you want to
travel and explore. Learning and discovering are major components of the
urge to travel, and the Bluegrass State is a cornucopia of
one-of-a-kind places.
There’s only one ….. Kentucky, and it’s waiting for you to discover. For more information, visit
www.kentuckytourism.com.