Portal:Kentucky/Selected attraction

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My Old Kentucky Home State Park is a state park in Kentucky. It is located in Bardstown. The state park consists of Federal Hill, a former plantation owned by the Rowan family. A visit to the site in 1852 is said to have inspired Stephen Foster to write his famous song, My Old Kentucky Home. On June 1st, 1992, a 29-cent stamp was issued honoring the park.

The park features an amphitheater that is home to the long-running outdoor musical, Stephen Foster — The Musical, which was usually staged each night except Monday during the summer. It is the longest running outdoor drama in the state of Kentucky, having started in 1959.

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Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site preserves two farm sites where Abraham Lincoln lived as a child.

In the fall of 1808, Thomas and Nancy Lincoln settled on Sinking Spring Farm. Today this site bears the address of 2995 Lincoln Farm Road, Hodgenville, Kentucky. Two months later on February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room log cabin. A cabin, symbolic of the one in which Lincoln was born, is preserved in a memorial building at the site. The Lincolns lived and farmed at Sinking Spring before moving to land a few miles away at Knob Creek, which is located a few miles to the northeast along U.S. Highway 31.

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Mammoth Cave National Park is a U.S. National Park in central Kentucky, encompassing portions of Mammoth Cave, the most elongated cave system known in the world. The official name of the system is the Mammoth Cave System for the ridge under which the cave has formed. The park was established as a national park on July 1, 1941. It became a World Heritage Site on October 27, 1981, and an international Biosphere Reserve on September 26, 1990.

The guide traditions at Mammoth Cave date back to the period just after the War of 1812, and to guides such as Stephen Bishop. The style of this humor itself is part of the living tradition of the cave guides, and is duly a part of the interpretive program.

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Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest is a 14,000 acre (57 km²) arboretum, forest, and nature preserve located in Clermont, Kentucky (south of Louisville, Kentucky, United States). It was founded in 1929 by Isaac Wolfe Bernheim, a German immigrant and successful brewer whose whiskey distillery business established the I.W. Harper brand. He purchased the land in 1928 at $1 an acre because most of it had been stripped for mining iron ore.

The property includes a 240-acre (0.97 km²) arboretum containing over 1,900 labeled species and cultivars of trees, shrubs, and other plants. The arboretum includes over 185 cultivars of American holly species. Other major collections include maples, crab apples, conifers (including dwarf conifers), oaks, buckeyes, ginkgoes, ornamental pears, and dogwoods. Specific attractions within the arboretum include the sun and shade trail, quiet garden, and garden pavilion.

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Kentucky Horse Park is a working horse farm and an educational theme park opened in 1978 in Lexington, Kentucky. The equestrian facility is a 1,200-acre (4.9 km²) park dedicated to "man's relationship with the horse." Open to the public, the Park has a twice daily Parade of Breeds, showcasing both common and rare horses from across the globe. The horses are ridden in authentic costume. Each year the Park is host to a number of special events and horse shows.

Every year from one week after Thanksgiving to New Year's Day, the Kentucky Horse Park features a three-mile (5 km) drive-through Christmas lights display.

Although the park is owned by the state government, it is administered separately from the the state park system.

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The Creation Museum is a 60,000 square foot museum in the United States designed to promote young Earth creationism.

The museum presents an account of the origins of the universe, life, mankind, and man's early history according to a literal reading of the book of Genesis. Its exhibits reject evolution and assert that the earth and all of its life forms were created in 6 days just 6000 years ago and that man and dinosaurs once coexisted.

According to the founder of Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham, "One of the main reasons we moved there was because we are within one hour's flight of 69 per cent of America's population. Ham also explains how the idea of the museum originated: "Australia's not really the place to build such a facility if you're going to reach the world. Really, America is." Previously Ham worked for the Institute for Creation Research, which runs a creationist museum in Santee, California with free admission

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Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area is a United States National Recreation Area located in Kentucky and Tennessee between Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake. The area was designated a national recreation area by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The recreation area was originally managed by the Tennessee Valley Authority but jurisdiction has since been transferred to the United States Forest Service.

The Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers flow very close to each other in the northwestern corner of Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky, separated by a rather narrow and mostly low ridge. This area where they are only a few miles apart had been known as "Between the Rivers" since at least the 1830s or 1840s. After the Cumberland River was impounded in the 1960s and a canal was constructed between the two lakes, Land Between The Lakes became the largest inland peninsula in the United States. Downstream from this area, the courses of the rivers then diverge again, with the result being that the mouth of the Cumberland into the Ohio River is approximately 40 mi (64 km) from that of the Tennessee.

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Belle of Louisville is a steamboat owned and operated by the city of Louisville, Kentucky and moored at its downtown wharf next to the Riverfront Plaza/Belvedere during its annual operational period. Originally named the Idlewild, she was built by James Rees & Sons Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the West Memphis Packet Company in 1914 and was first put into service on the Allegheny River. Constructed with an all-steel superstructure and asphalt main deck, the steamboat is said to hold the all-time record in her class for miles traveled, years in operation, and number of places visited.

The Belle's offices are located within the Mayor Andrew Broaddus, also a National Historic Landmark.

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Pleasant Hill is the site of a Shaker religious community that was active from 1805 to 1910. Following a preservationist effort that began in 1961, the site, now a National Historic Landmark, has become a popular tourist destination. Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, or Shakertown, as it is known by residents of the area, is located 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Lexington, in Kentucky's Bluegrass region.

On January 1, 1805, with eleven Shaker communities already established in New York and New England, three Shaker missionaries set out to find new converts among the pioneers then pouring into the western lands by way of Cumberland Gap and the Ohio. By August, they had gathered a small group of new adherents to the doctrine of Mother Ann Lee, many of whom had earlier been influenced by the fervent Cane Ridge Revival. In December 1806, forty-four converts of legal age signed a covenant agreeing to mutual support and the common ownership of property.

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Ashland is the name of the estate of the nineteenth-century Kentucky statesman Henry Clay, located in Lexington, Kentucky in the Bluegrass region of central Kentucky. It is a registered National Historic Landmark.

Henry Clay came to Lexington from Virginia in 1797. He began buying land for his estate in 1804. The Ashland farm--which during Clay's lifetime was outside of the city limits--at its largest consisted of over 600 acres (2.4 km²). It is unclear whether Clay named the estate or retained a prior name, but he was referring to his estate as "Ashland" by 1809. The name derives from the ash forest that stood at the site. Clay and his family resided at Ashland from c. 1806 until his death in 1852 (his widow, Lucretia, moved out in 1854).

When granddaughter Anne Clay McDowell came to Ashland in 1883, she and her husband remodeled and modernized the house, updating it with gas lighting (later, electricity), indoor plumbing, and telephone service.

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