8 Of The Most Adorable Small Towns In Kentucky

The most adorable towns in Kentucky earn the word the hard way. They are too busy being useful to try for cute. Harrodsburg has kept the frontier fort where the commonwealth got its start. Berea still teaches mountain craft to students who pay no tuition. La Grange never bothered to move the freight tracks off Main Street. Paducah turned a plain concrete floodwall into blocks of open-air painting. Adorable here is a byproduct of towns that stayed true to themselves. These eight reward anyone willing to explore on foot.

Henderson

This Ohio River town in Western Kentucky has a special place in the heart of all bird watchers in the state. In the early 1800s, John James Audubon came here to study the migratory birds of the Ohio River. His legacy is preserved at the John James Audubon State Park. The park has wetlands, a museum, and viewing areas for warblers, waterfowl, and other birds. It also has an ADA-compliant walkway leading out to a boardwalk that overlooks the Audubon Wetlands. Other activities in Henderson include strolling by the Ohio River at Audubon Mill Park, or sitting down to western Kentucky barbecue at a pit like Thomason's Barbecue on Atkinson Street.

Paducah

Paducah has worked diligently to create a community where art isn't just a feature but rather an integral part of the culture and environment. For example, it maintains a collection of antique and modern quilts at The National Quilt Museum. Here, one can learn how to quilt from experts, or go for a walk at the riverfront to see the Wall to Wall floodwall murals painted by Robert Dafford and his team of muralists. Paducah is one of a select group of cities in the world that have earned the title of a UNESCO Creative City. That designation shows up in the community theaters and art galleries in town, such as the Market House Theatre and the Yeiser Art Center.

La Grange

A few miles south of the Ohio River sits a friendly community where the railroad still dominates the land. La Grange is just outside of Louisville, and it considers itself the Kindness Capital of Kentucky, with signs reminding folks to Be Kind all around its downtown and suburbs. It's easy to be friendly in a town where CSX freight trains run down the middle of Main Street dozens of times a day. Those tracks pass the La Grange Railroad Museum & Learning Center, which keeps model train layouts and a restored 1929 L&N dining car. The Oldham County History Center sits a few blocks away. Further out from downtown is the Sauerbeck Family Drive-In for a drive-in movie theater experience.

Georgetown

Georgetown combines innovative car manufacturing with laid-back Kentucky charm. It's one of the fastest-growing towns in Kentucky, driven by job opportunities at the Toyota assembly plant. Guests can see this plant in action on a tram tour booked through the Toyota Visitor Center. Georgetown celebrates a different kind of horsepower at the Old Friends farm, a retirement home for thoroughbred horses that includes a few Kentucky Derby runners. Guests can book a tour to meet and feed these horses, or they can visit Ward Hall, a Greek Revival mansion built in the 1850s. This mansion has many stories to tell, including that of Sallie Ward, a Scott County belle whose exploits filled newspapers across the country.

Versailles

Versailles is one of many communities in Kentucky with a French name. In Versailles' case, it comes from the palace of the French kings in the 17th and 18th centuries. This community has a palace of its own at the Kentucky Castle. Construction started in 1969 as a private residence, stalled for decades after the owners divorced, and survived a fire in 2004. The building finally opened to the public in 2008. Today it acts as a hotel, restaurant, working farm, and curiosity. It's a good base for exploring the rest of central Kentucky, including the Woodford Reserve distillery with its tours, tastings, and bottles to take home. Versailles also hosts Rail Explorers Bluegrass, a pedal-powered rail bike that traverses an old rail line through the Bluegrass country.

Harrodsburg

Harrodsburg's roots run deep, dating back to its founding in 1774, nearly two decades before Kentucky was a state. It's the oldest town in Kentucky. Bardstown, the next oldest, came along six years later. Harrodsburg has worked to protect that heritage through Old Fort Harrod State Park, which includes a recreation of the original fort from the 1700s. The park's Mansion Museum holds artifacts from the American Revolutionary War and the American Civil War. At the fort, a log cabin sits inside a brick shrine called the Lincoln Marriage Temple. Many believe Abraham Lincoln's parents, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, were wed in it. One of the most distinctive attractions in Harrodsburg is a historic village established by the Shaker religion in the 1800s called Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill. This village contains the original Shaker dwelling places, a farm, and a nature preserve for hiking.

Berea

Berea is a college town in Appalachia where standing against the crowd is a way of life. Berea College opened in 1855 as the first interracial and coeducational college in the South, and it still charges no tuition to the students it admits. These students often go on to become expert folk artisans, displaying their works at the Kentucky Artisan Center at Berea or getting their own gallery in the Artisan Village. Students also help maintain the trails of the Berea College Forest, including the Pinnacles. That trail ranks highly among Kentucky hikers for its views of the Kentucky side of the Appalachian Mountains. Guests in Berea often check in at the Historic Boone Tavern, built in 1909 with bricks that students made at the college's own brickyard. It gets its name from the Kentucky explorer Daniel Boone.

London

London prides itself on being bike-friendly, enabling cyclists to explore both its streets and trails safely. It calls itself the Cycling Capital of Kentucky, a title it earned with the Red Bud Ride held each April. But cyclists can try out the trails at any time, such as the Yellow Route, which follows rural roads beginning in downtown London. Others head for the dirt and gravel of Levi Jackson Wilderness Road Park, an 896-acre city park south of town crossed by pioneer routes, including Boone's Trace. North of London in Laurel County is the Camp Wildcat Battlefield, where 7,000 Union soldiers clashed with 5,400 Confederate troops on October 21, 1861. It was one of the earliest Union victories in the American Civil War and is marked with a reenactment each October.

Heaven is a Kentucky kind of place

Daniel Boone is often quoted as saying that heaven must be a Kentucky kind of place. Residents here have built their own versions of it. A castle stands on a hill outside Versailles. Trails climb to sandstone overlooks above Berea. Forts, Shaker dwellings, and a national quilt collection have been kept up rather than let go, and each one still gives a Kentuckian a reason to spend a Saturday close to home.