Bardstown was voted the most beautiful small town in America by Rand McNally and USA Today in a best of the road contest.

That was a national contest.

And of course, Bardstown being a community of around 12,000 people where we're competing with communities of 150,000 people.

But when it all came down, we had a huge online campaign.

People really jumped on board.

People who had lived here in the past, people who lived here before.

And at that point in time, we made the top five as far as top vote getting communities.

And then what they did, they looked at all the communities.

They judge them within with their judges and decided which communities to actually go to and send judges out all across the country to do the final voting.

And so we made the top five in the most beautiful category, which is really the category we were wanting.

There were the the friendliest.

There was the best food, there was most patriotic.

But we knew by looking at Bardstown that we would do very well in the most beautiful category.

And that's where it all began.

And so they sent two judges down, and they went to five communities across the country, all the way from the northern part of the country, all the way to Baker City, Oregon, is where they ended.

And there were Danville, Kentucky, Tybee Island, several other communities along the way.

And they spent two or three days in each of these communities meeting the people.

And toward the very end, they compiled all their data and everything they learned across there month long, I think, judging campaign and their nationwide tour until they ended up and announced that we were actually the winner in the overall category.

And themost beautiful small town in America, they said in their judging criteria and in their finals and on TV and on the Travel Channel and in USA Today was the fact that Bardstown won because they found us to be beautiful on the inside and on the outside, which meant the beauty, the physical beauty is here with our old buildings and the pride the people have in their community by keeping it clean.

But it was really the spirit of the community, a town so small that we were one, the smallest that they actually visited in town.

So small group together in spirit and came out and supported them and took part in all the activities that included the judges.

They thought that was pretty special and that was the beauty they saw inside Bardstown.

Our downtown is an attraction in itself.

We have over 300 homes on the National Register of Historic Places, and our residents and our businesses are very good at keeping them up, keeping them painted, keeping them in good shape that we actually have visitors, that that may never make it anywhere else other than our downtown to see the historic preservation.

We are one of the state's gems as far as historical preservation, and people come here and learn about how to preserve the correct way and the town that has done it right with the historical preservation ordinances in place.

It's certainly a destination for people that come from out of state just to experience the shopping that we have here in the dining options to.

And if you're coming downtown, you have to stop and have a milkshake at the old Hurst Drugstore, which is a soda fountain, authentic, still in existence today.

It's been there for decades.

And that's people will come back or they've come to Bardstown for years and years.

They always have to stop and have a milkshake at the soda fountain at her drugstore.

That's definitely a stop in downtown, downtowns survive and in communities like Bardstown, Small Communities.

If you have a gathering place, people want to have a place to come to again, to get out of their houses and to get with their other friends, whether they are entertained with a band or the we're having a soda fountain gathering or wine tasting downtown, we're still that community.

We're that community.

We get together and we gather downtown and we still have our banks.

Downtown are our major shopping outlets are still down here.

We still have our insurance companies, there's retail, but there is those service places.

You have to come.

You still get your license plates down here.

A lot of our governmental offices are still downtown, too.

So those continue to make the downtown area thrive and survive and continue to bring people downtown on a daily basis, which is important for the survival of any community.

Bardstown was founded in 1780.

We are the second oldest community in the state of Kentucky, just second behind.

Harrodsburg, of course, fought hard there.

But it's interesting to come downtown and see the most photographed building in our downtown, which is the old Talbot Tavern, because on the side of the old Talbot Tavern, you will see it says 1779, which of course is a year before the community was founded.

But the Tavern Tavern is a continuously owned building and it was an old stagecoach stop.

But there's a lot of ways to experience Bardstown.

In addition to walking, you can certainly take a carriage ride through our tree lined streets, including a special VIP tour from Jonesy, our carriage driver.

He will give you the history of each building you passed and the history of the community all on this trip downtown through downtown historic Bardstown.

And then if you want something a little cooler in an air conditioned fashion, you can take the Heaven Hill trolley, which is a true reenacted trolley facility.

And it takes a tour of the downtown area and goes out to Heaven Hill Distillery, where you get a full tour of the distillery itself.

Bardstown is the bourbon capital of the world and the heart of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.

What's bringing thousands of visitors to to Bardstown?

Each and every year, another must see stop in Bardstown when you come, as our history goes, is the Basilica of Saint Joseph, and it is the first cathedral built West of the Allegheny Mountains.

So we run really deep in spirit here, whether it's the spirit of bourbon or the religious spirit.

So Catholicism runs very deep in our spiritual history in Nelson County is deep as well.

My old Kentucky home state Park is one of the oldest state parks in the state of Kentucky, and it also has the distinction of being on a national postage stamp and on the Kentucky quarter.

And it's a lot of fun out there.

It's not just a home to go visit.

It has an 18 hole golf course, it has a campground, it has primitive campground, and it also has kind of a playground area for kids.

So it's a place that sees lots and lots of visitors every year.

My old Kentucky home is our state shrine here in Bardstown, Kentucky, and it sees tens of thousands of visitors each year that not only go through the beautifully restored home that sits on the massive wooded grounds there, but also is the site of the Stephen Foster Ampitheater, which is home to the Stephen Foster story, which tells the life and times of Stephen Foster, America's greatest composer.

Oh, really?

Okay, so is.