We toured Loretta's Western Town today. The first order of business was to mail a birthday card to a friend in Florida, and then we joined a tour of the replica of Loretta's childhood home in Butcher Holler by the Van Lear mine in Kentucky. Loretta had it built to show her fans her rags to riches story. The house had two bedrooms upstairs -- one for the boys and one for the girls. Her parents slept on the first floor . The house had no electricity or plumbing. They did have a battery operated radio which they only turned on to listen to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights. From her childhood home we toured a replica of a coal mine, as Loretta wanted to show the conditions that her father experienced working in the mine. We then took a tour bus across the road to see her plantation home. The house was built in the pre-Civil War period and when she and Mooney bought it, they got the town of Hurricane Mills with it! The "town" consisted of a post office, a grist mill, and a store. The house was restored and now contains seven bedrooms, 8 fireplaces, a modern kitchen, a diningroom, Victorian living room, and a den with western and Indian motif. During the time that Loretta lived in the house, they bred thoroughbred horses and raised cattle as well as soy beans, corn, and oats on their 6500 acres. In 1988 they moved to a smaller house about 50 feet behind the big house and opened the house to her fans. Hurricane Mills now consists of the coal mine, the Butcher Holler House, grist mill museum, doll museum, and Loretta's recording studio and museum, as well as several souvenir shops and snack shack. We'll tour her museum tomorrow after breakfast.
It is said that the house is haunted, and that there are two bedrooms upstairs where people have seen Civil War soldiers roaming, and also a mother who is looking for her child. She and the baby died in childbirth. I'll have to explore that a bit more.
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