Straight-as-an-arrow roads aren’t on southeastern Kentucky’s list of travel attributes, but their absence shouldn’t deter you from exploring the hills and hollows of the Bluegrass State. Plenty of treasures await along its byways — spectacular gorges and overlooks, the place where an international chicken brand was born, celebrations of music legends, a college famous for student-made craft items and even a chance to see a moonbow.
The region borders Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. Add Ohio if you want to stretch things a bit. Gateway cities for this corner of Appalachia are Knoxville, Tennessee; Lexington, Kentucky; and Charleston/Huntington, West Virginia. The small communities of London and Corbin (both approximately 8,000 population) along Interstate 75 often serve as centers for hub-and-spoke itineraries.
Cumberland Gap Area
A spot famous in American history anchors the region’s southeastern corner — Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. This was the gap in the Appalachian Mountains where bison and Native Americans carved paths that longhunters and pioneers followed into the continent’s interior. Your American history book probably featured an idealized painting of Daniel Boone leading settlers through the Cumberland Gap. Today you can stand in three states at once (Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia), enjoy National Park Service programs and start to sense the region’s history.
That cultural history is so deep and strong that the park service has completed a feasibility study that could lead designating 35 counties as the Kentucky Wildlands National Heritage Area (NHA). Congress labels NHAs as places where natural, cultural and historical resources combine to form cohesive, nationally important landscapes, and while NHA designation isn’t a certainty, the study alone paints a picture of places that warrant visiting.
The terrain can be rugged, but the wonders that evolved over geologic time are the payoff. Among the most famous are the Red River Gorge, Natural Bridge and Cumberland Falls, which is nicknamed the Niagara of the South. The waterfall is a 125-foot curtain of water that under just the right conditions creates the rarest of rare sights — a moonbow.
Cumberland Falls Resort State Park offers lodging in the 51-room DuPont Lodge, where stone fireplaces, hemlock beams and knotty pine paneling provide a rustic ambiance. (Other destination resort state parks in the region include Jenny Wiley, Natural Bridge and Pine Mountain.)
Cumberland Falls Park manager Maggy Monhollen, who directed tourism efforts at nearby Corbin for 10 years, encourages groups to explore far and wide.
“There are plenty of hidden gems [in southeastern Kentucky] that can provide authentic experiences that have people go home talking about them,” Monhollen observed, talking about everything from Corbin landmarks such as the Harland Sanders Cafe and Museum (that’s where Kentucky Fried Chicken began) and Bubby’s Barbecue (buffets laden with pulled pork, fried catfish, fried green tomatoes, bread pudding and froglegs on Fridays) to the Kentucky Coal Mining Museum in Benham, where the harsh realities of working underground are made clear.
Country Music Highway and More
It’s practically impossible to hear about Kentucky coalmining and not think of the “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Loretta Lynn. The famous cabin in Butcher Hollow where she and her sister Crystal Gayle grew up is just north of Pikeville and is open for tours. The Webb Grocery, which has a collection of Loretta Lynn memorabilia, is the jumping off point for a cabin tour.
Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle are just the start of the list of musical notables from this area. Enough luminaries have roots here that U.S. 23 is called the Country Music Highway as it winds through seven counties. The Country Music Highway Museum in Paintsville highlights artists such as Chris Stapleton, the Judds, Patty Loveless, Dwight Yoakam, Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley — and it offers live music with Thursday night Front Porch Pickin’ events.
Another museum experience is at the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Mt. Vernon. It opened in 2002 and honors a variety of Kentucky country and bluegrass stars, as well as inductees from other styles of music. Among them are pop’s Jackie DeShannon (“Put a Little Love in Your Heart” and “What the World Needs Now Is Love”), contemporary Christian artist Steven Curtis Chapman and jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton.
Next door to the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame is one of the South’s most famous music destinations, the Renfro Valley Entertainment Center. Its popularity started in 1939 with the Renfro Valley Barn Dance, a radio show, in what now is called the Old Barn Theatre (OBT). The OBT is a general admission music hall and older sibling to the New Barn Theatre.
The New Barn Theatre seats 1,500 people for shows by current touring acts. The 2024 schedule included Ricky Skaggs, Billy Bob Thornton and the Boxmasters, Sawyer Brown, the Kentucky Headhunters, the Marshall Tucker Band, Exile, Mark Chesnutt, Rhonda Vincent and the Gatlin Brothers.
Berea
No one place can capture all aspects of southeastern Kentucky, but the tiny college town of Berea goes a long way. Appalachia is baked into the DNA of Berea College (enrollment of approximately 1,500), something proven by its Student Crafts Program. Most of Berea’s students are from Appalachia, and the crafts program helps keep the region’s culture alive.
Students learn by doing. More precisely, they learn by making, and visitors are the beneficiaries because they can buy the heirloom furniture, hand-woven textiles, woodcrafts and beautiful brooms made by students.
Berea, the South’s first coeducational and racially integrated college, dates to 1855. The crafts program began in 1893. All Berea students work at least 10 hours a week to support college operation and gain workplace experience. Studios devoted to ceramics, board games, weaving and woodworking are part of Student Crafts Program tours. Students are the guides, and tours take about an hour.
In the middle of it all and a place to rest up for another day of touring is another Berea College attraction — Boone Tavern. This group-friendly 63-room hotel is a member of Historic Hotels of America.
