For more information:
• Maker’s Mark Visitors Center, 3350 Burks Spring Road, Loretto, KY 40037, (270) 865-2099

Producer, editor: Mike White
Videographer: Stan Petrey

On Your Mark

Maker’s Mark Distillery

The Samuels family has been making whiskey since 1840. Bill Samuels Jr., current operator of the Maker’s Mark Distillery near the tiny Marion County town of Loretto, represents the family’s fifth generation in the business. Come along for a tour of how bourbon is made and a short history of one of Kentucky’s best-known products.

Maker’s Mark Distillery is located 15 miles south of Bardstown via KY 49. Tours are conducted hourly on the half-hour from 10:30 am to 3:30 pm (ET) Monday through Saturday and at 1:30, 2:30, and 3:30 pm on Sundays.

Producer: Guy Mendes

Art on the Vine

“Gourd Lady” Minnie Black

At the time of her death in April 1996, East Bernstadt’s Minnie Black was known far and wide as the “Gourd Lady,” both from showing her fancifully painted works of gourd art at crafts exhibitions and from her appearances on The Tonight Show and Late Night with David Letterman (while in her 90s!). In this segment from the KET archives, she shows off some of her gourd creations, including several musical instruments.

For more information:
• Pikeville-Pike County Tourism Commission, P.O. Box 1497, Pikeville, KY 41502, (800) 844-7453

Producer: Joy Flynn
Videographer: Gale Worth
Editor: Dan Taulbee

Remembering the Feud

The Hatfields and the McCoys

The 19th-century feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families along the Kentucky-West Virginia border lasted just 12 years (claiming 12 lives), but sensationalistic newspaper coverage and exploitative novels and film portrayals magnified it in the popular imagination, helping to create the negative “hillbilly” stereotype. (Some sources, though, “credit” Tennessee writer Mary Murfree, who published short stories establishing many stock characters in the 1880s.)

In this segment, Kentucky Life profiles the real people involved in the events, most of whom were as shocked by the violence as the outside world. We also meet some modern-day tourism officials who are working to make the feud a positive influence in their communities by creating a tour of famed feud sites.