Visit Loretta Lynn's home
By KEN BECK
TennesseanTravel.com
(Wednesday - 30 January 2008)
HURRICANE MILLS, Tenn. — From Highway 13, wind your way back on a couple of miles of asphalt to the heart of this pretty-as-a-picture community, and you'll find a mill and post office and a white antebellum mansion on the hill.
This 3,500-acre farm and village has been home to Loretta Lynn and her family for more than 40 years. As Loretta Lynn's Ranch, it has become a top state tourist attraction and offers such simple pleasures as a walk through the singer's house to camping, horseback riding or canoeing Hurricane Creek.
"We was just out for a Sunday drive, and we drove by this big ole white house, and I looked up on this big ole hill and said, 'I want that house right there,' " said Lynn, recollecting the day in 1964 she and her late husband, Mooney Doolittle Lynn, first spied the two-story, 1817 plantation house fronted by six Corinthian columns.
Lynn's daughter, Patsy, remembers moving into the house in 1966.
"We were very isolated out in Hurricane Mills. Mom and Dad moved us all out about an hour and a half west of anything," said Patsy of the community 70 miles west of Nashville. "Dad always said he was the sheriff and mayor because they purchased the entire town with the post office. Hurricane Mills is its own town and has its own zip code."
In the midst of a scorching summer, fans of "the coal miner's daughter" come in droves. Many take the $12 guided tour that treks seven times daily through Lynn's plantation home, her Butcher Holler Home Place and the simulated Coal Mine No. 5. Then they check out the 18,000-square-foot museum. The first week of every August the Amateur National Motocross Championship draws 30,000 to 40,000 spectators here, and equestrians will trot in for the Haunted Halloween Trail Ride Oct. 26-28.
"I think it's just a really unique tour because it's laidback and like a living museum," said guide Bob Register. "It's not commercial like Dollywood or Graceland, but this is Loretta's home, and she invites her fans like she invites her family."
Fans of the country singer began visiting in the early 1970s, and Mooney Lynn began holding rodeos at the ranch by the mid-1970s. After the release of Loretta's autobiographical film, Coal Miner's Daughter, in 1978, the tiny tourist spot leapt off the map.
"Doo didn't have much to do with the dude ranch. I thought it'd be neat to have people come and camp and enjoy the country," said Loretta, who performs at the ranch Sept. 29.
Walk around a spell
Hurricane Mills nestles around a red gristmill with a metal roof that was erected beside Hurricane Creek in 1896. The mill today contains the Loretta Lynn Doll and Fan Museum, a mill museum and the Old Mill Shop — all free.
Outside the mill, a 1911 metal truss bridge with wooden planks spans 150 feet across the creek below the dam. Across from the mill, the Hurricane Mills Post Office has been in business since 1876. Because Loretta owns the town, the U.S. government rents the building from her.
Guided tours start near the middle of the tiny town, first zipping through the mill store and museum and then up a hill to a replica of Loretta's Butcher Hollow house near Van Lear, Ky., where she was raised.
The small six-room house holds metal beds, a coal-burning fireplace, kerosene lamps and lanterns, an old radio and cook stove. Newspapers stick to the walls for insulation, while in the kitchen the pages from a 1947 Sears & Roebuck catalog decorate the ceiling.
From here it's back down the hill and through a courtyard to Loretta Lynn's Coal Mine No. 5. The simulated mine dips underground where visitors get an up-close look at what Loretta's father faced every day he went to work.
Enter the mansion
Next, it's a short bus ride up to the big house on the hill. A guide whisks visitors into Loretta's former kitchen, where she filmed some of those Crisco commercials ("It'll do you proud every time!").
The tour doesn't go upstairs where ghost sightings have been birthed, such as the Union soldier who tugged at son Ernie's bed or the lady in white seen coming down the stairs and wandering the second floor balcony.
"We call her the weeping woman," said Patsy. "She has been seen at the house many times by my sister, Peggy, and my mother. The house is definitely haunted."
Don't miss museum
Lynn's opened her 18,000 square-foot Coal Miner's Daughter Museum in 2001. It overflows with thousands of items from the singer's personal and professional life.
"Doolittle called me a pack rat," Loretta says. "I had a hard time taking care of stuff. I've had a lot of fun with the museum. I can sit back and look and see what I've done."
It's hard to describe everything here, but Gloria Land, who has worked for the Lynn family for 41 years, gives it a shot. "You'll see her tour bus, some automobiles, pictures, clothes, portraits — anything to do with her career."
A big-screen TV supplies vintage video footage of Loretta from the '60s and '70s. Displays old wedding dresses, rodeo memorabilia and gifts from celebrity friends. Parked in the Mooney Lynn Pavilion are Mooney's Jeep and Loretta's 1977 Cadillac of which she notes, "I wrote most of my hit songs in it."
Hungry for bologna?
After you exit the ranch, be sure to stop by Cissie Lynn's Country Store and Music Barn across the highway. Loretta's daughter and son-in-law John Beams opened the store a year ago. "It's a country store. We make our own homemade sweet tea and fry bologna and make chicken 'n' dumplings," Cissie said.
Cissie and her husband are hard at work on their music barn, installing a stage and sound system; they hope to have the music hall running by late fall.
"I'll feed 'em a meal and then do a 30-minute music show," said Cissie, who also plugs her sister's business between here and Interstate 40 — Betty Sue Lynn's Antique Emporium and the Lynn Family Flea Market (open Friday-Sunday). The ranch continues to be a working farm as brother Ernest Ray Lynn cares for it.
Sujet: Visit Loretta Lynn's home 
