Patsy Cline's Kent Street
Near Front Royal, Virginia
The small white house at six oh eight South Kent Street is where Virginia Patterson Hensley grew up, practiced her scales, and became Patsy Cline.
She lived here from nineteen forty-eight into the early nineteen fifties, sleeping in a house just over a thousand square feet, no bedroom to spare. She had been singing in honky-tonks since her teens, and in nineteen fifty-seven she drove a career-making bet all the way to New York for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, where she performed Walkin' After Midnight on live television. The song reached number two on the country charts and number twelve on pop.
Designated a National Historic Landmark in twenty twenty-one, the house now belongs to a nonprofit and opens as a museum. The girl from Winchester who remade the sound of American country music started right here.
