U.S. 23 Country Music Highway Museum — Paintsville, Kentucky

The U.S. 23 Country Music Highway Museum in Paintsville, Kentucky, is dedicated to the extraordinary concentration of musical talent that emerged from the eastern Kentucky communities along U.S. Route 23. The museum documents and honours dozens of artists who grew up in the hollows, coal camps, and small towns of the region.

Among the artists featured are Loretta Lynn, Crystal Gayle, Chris Stapleton, The Judds, Billy Ray Cyrus, Dwight Yoakam, Ricky Skaggs, Keith Whitley, Patty Loveless, Hylo Brown, and many others. The museum explores how the culture of Appalachian Kentucky — its isolation, its coal mining economy, its deeply rooted traditions of gospel and mountain music — produced one of the most significant clusters of country music talent anywhere in America.