This post is the third in my Place Bucket List series inspired by Adventures in Preservation, which asked readers what buildings were on our bucket lists.
*Note: The regions I have given these states in this, previous, and upcoming posts are how I have come to rationalize them for this purpose (and to prevent any one post from being too long), not necessarily how these regions are defined by any government entity.
*Note #2: I’ve updated the Middle Atlantic post to reflect suggestions I received and to add a place I forgot but definitely want to go to.
North Carolina:
- The Biltmore
- Roanoke Island
- Cupola House
- Tryon Palace
- Old Salem
South Carolina:
- Charleston
- Drayton Hall
- Governor’s Mansion
- Columbia
Georgia:
- Savannah
- Legoland
- Thomasville
- Helen
- Okefenokee Swamp Park
- Roosevelt’s Little White House
- Atlanta History Center
Florida:
- Pensacola
- Jacksonville
- Disney
- Universal Studios
Kentucky:
- Louisville Slugger Museum
- Berea
- Churchill Downs
- The International Bluegrass Music Museum
- Ashland
- Daniel Boone’s Grave
- Lexington
- The various Lincoln sites
- What else, Bricks + Mortar?
Tennessee:
- Nashville (Including Grand Ole Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum)
- Knoxville (Including Graceland)
- Memphis
- Chatanooga
- Bell Witch Cave
- Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Feel like I missed something? Let me know!
Preservation and Place 
Louisville is just dripping with great old buildings in the neighborhoods that lie just beyond downtown. You can just drive around town dazzled for hours.
In western North Carolina, I’d recommend looking into Cataloochee, Roaring Ford and/or Cades Cove. They’re three of the communities that were abandoned when the National Park Service bought the land in the 1920s to create that part of Great Smokey Mountain National Park. The NPS is maintaining them and many of the buildings are open to the public. They’re a little hard to get to (down winding gravel roads into the holler) so an easier option (though not quite as interesting or fulfilling an experience) is Mountain Folk Museum, in Cherokee, where the NPS took indigenous buildings from throughought the park and moved them to one location to create an example of a mountain homestead.
Oops — that would be Mountain Farm Museum in Cherokee.
You should probably do the Bourbon Trail if your going to be going from end of the state to the other! Most of the distilleries are even historic 😉
What a good call. 🙂
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