The Official Kentucky Visitor's Guide - The Official Kentucky Visitor's Guide 2025

Bluegrass, Horses, Bourbon & Boone

2024-12-14 07:41:04

WILD TURKEY DISTILLERY VISITOR CENTER, LAWRENCEBURG

Carefree, fresh-air family fun on the farm. A deep dive into Kentucky’s complicated Civil War history. A new way to experience Horse Country and a novel way to explore art — there’s something for everyone in this region.

GLASS NATIONAL ART MUSEUM, DANVILLE

SHAKER VILLAGE OF PLEASANT HILL, HARRODSBURG

AFRICAN CEMETERY NO. 2, LEXINGTON

BEER CHEESE TRAIL, WINCHESTER

OLD FORT HARROD STATE PARK, HARRODSBURG

HOPEWELL MUSEUM, PARIS

BLUEGRASS RAIL EXPLORERS, VERSAILLES

History with a side of spirits:

WENDT’S WILDLIFE ADVENTURE, CARLISLE

Enjoy al fresco sips and sandwiches at Ginkgo Tree Café at Lexington’s Ashland-The Henry Clay Estate. Visit the formal garden and stroll the estate’s historic grounds. Walk among Todd family tombstones on the “House Divided” cemetery walking tour with the Mary Todd Lincoln House, then explore the future first lady’s girlhood home.

CASTLE & KEY DISTILLERY, FRANKFORT

Civil War-era medical displays, cavalry demonstrations and food from the period: Find this and more when hundreds of reenactors and living historians converge in Richmond in August for the Battle of Richmond Reenactment. Lexington’s African American Heritage Self-Guided Walking Tour is three tours in one for 35 stops featuring significant landmarks, including four Victorian houses that formed the Kimball House Hotel.

Board at the site of Versailles’ Bluegrass Scenic Railroad & Museum for a glide through Kentucky Horse Country with the Rail Explorers’ pedal-powered vehicles with custom-built electric motors.

Pay tribute to history’s greatest racehorse at the new Secretariat Park in Paris, featuring a life-size bronze sculpture of the Triple Crown champion set before a three-story mural that also bears his image. Find more larger-than-life art at Frankfort’s free-admission Josephine Sculpture Park, where 70 contemporary works of art are poised amidst the splendor of native meadows and forests.

Danville’s Great American Dollhouse Museum shrinks reality down with over 200 intricately detailed dollhouses, miniature buildings and room boxes filled with tiny people (fantasy creatures, too) — vignettes of American social history. A fairytale come to life: The Glitz in Versailles is twinkle-light gourmet dining downstairs from Irish Acres Gallery of Antiques and its stunning 50 showrooms of fine antiques.

Sloths, camels, reptiles, zebras and more. Meet, pet and feed animals from around the world — 35 different species — at Wendt’s Wildlife Adventure in Carlisle. Parakeet Encounter, too. Think of Georgetown’s Bi-Water Farm and Evans Orchard as agrarian amusement parks, chockful of “rides” like chutes and slides, jumping pillows, swings and more, plus fall fest fun and homemade fried apple pies.

KENTUCKY EQUINE ADOPTION CENTER, NICHOLASVILLE

4 musts

Grab a Bite

Jailer’s Home Luncheon and Dungeon Tour, Carlisle

Stop and Shop

Poor Richard’s Books, Frankfort

Music, Moments, Magic

Ward Hall Christmas Candlelight Tour, Georgetown (December)

Local Heritage & Culture

The Kentucky Castle, Versailles

DREAMING CREEK BREWERY, RICHMOND

Regional Road Trips

1 1862: Kentucky’s bloodiest battlefield. 2025: One of the country’s most unaltered Civil War sites. The Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site in Perryville preserves the setting, saga and sweeping vistas over 72,000 men experienced the day Union and Confederate soldiers clashed, resulting in more than 7,600 casualties.

WAVELAND STATE HISTORIC SITE, LEXINGTON

2 Explore the “Pieces of Pleasant Hill” exhibit at Harrodsburg’s Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill. Join a Shaker sing-along. Take a workshop. Meet barnyard babies. Dine on farm-fresh, traditional Kentucky fare at The Trustees’ Table. Hike to a waterfall in the Nature Preserve. Buy a signature keepsake Shaker oval box.

3 Follow freedom’s footsteps on a guided tour amidst earthworks and fortifications at Nicholasville’s Camp Nelson National Monument, the site of the historic depot that recruited and trained soldiers and sheltered refugees during the Civil War and played a key role in the emancipation of thousands of African Americans.

4 With distilleries, a craft brewery, eateries, outdoor seating ‘round the firepit, live music, retro arcade games and flashing pinball machines, waffle-coned ice cream treats, a beer garden and ping pong lounge, Lexington’s Distillery District is a “big kid’s” playground. Did we mention private rooftop cabanas (21+) and tiki cocktails?

HISTORIC BOONE TAVERN HOTEL, BEREA

5 Shop for handcrafted wood items, glass ornaments, cornshuck dolls and other works in Artisan Village and at Kentucky Artisan Center in Berea, Kentucky’s Folk Arts & Crafts Capital. Weave a grapevine wreath or make a mixed media art journal at a LearnShop. Overnight at Historic Boone Tavern Hotel.

6 What to do in the Birthplace of Beer Cheese? Taste this original Kentucky delicacy on the Winchester/Clark County Beer Cheese Trail with more than a dozen stops and signature dishes. (Beer cheese soup, anyone?) The culminating beer cheese experience? The annual June Beer Cheese Festival.