Bardstown: Bourbon Capital of the World

Bardstown calls itself the Bourbon Capital of the World, and the claim holds up. Settlers arrived in seventeen eighty, and William Bard surveyed and platted the town, formally established in seventeen eighty-eight, making it one of the oldest in Kentucky. Distilling began here almost immediately, drawing on the county's limestone-filtered water, local grain, and humid climate. Maker's Mark, which has made bourbon in nearby Loretto since nineteen fifty-four, is a short drive from downtown.

By the mid-twentieth century Nelson County concentrated more bourbon production per square mile than anywhere on earth. Heaven Hill, Barton Seventeen Ninety-Two, and Jim Beam all maintain major operations in the Bardstown area. The Kentucky Bourbon Festival draws tens of thousands of visitors each September. The town also holds My Old Kentucky Home State Park, home to Federal Hill, the plantation house that inspired Stephen Foster's state song. Between the bourbon trail and the historic mansion, Bardstown packs an unusual amount of American cultural history into a single small city of about fourteen thousand people.

David Bard received a land grant in seventeen eighty-five, and the town was incorporated in eighteen thirty-eight. The Diocese of Bardstown was created in eighteen oh eight and moved to Louisville in eighteen forty-one, leaving behind the Basilica of Saint Joseph Proto-Cathedral. The Old Talbott Tavern is reputed to have hosted Daniel Boone and Abraham Lincoln, and the Civil War Museum is described as the fourth largest of its kind in the country. The census counted thirteen thousand five hundred sixty-seven residents in twenty twenty.