Things to Do in Harrodsburg, Kentucky

From 1805 to 1910 this was home to the third-largest Shaker community in the country. Today it’s a 3,000-acre National Historic Landmark with 34 original 19th-century buildings, the largest private collection of its kind. The inn spreads its rooms across 13 restored Shaker buildings, and the Trustees’ Table serves seasonal Kentucky dishes from the village garden.

★ Good to know The village is closed Mondays, so plan a Harrodsburg weekend around a Tuesday-to-Sunday visit.

Beyond the buildings, Shaker Village has a 30.5-mile trail system through prairie, woods and hand-laid rock walls; more than 1,000 acres have been restored to native prairie. The River Road Trail drops 1.5 miles to Shaker Landing on the Kentucky River, and the 1-mile Palisades Trail passes a 50-foot waterfall below the limestone cliffs.

★ Good to know Trails are open every day from sunrise to sunset, and you can launch your own canoe or kayak from Shaker Landing when the river is at a safe level.

A full-scale replica of Harrod’s 1774 fort, with furnished cabins and blockhouses, was built in the 1920s and dedicated by FDR in 1934. The park also holds the Mansion Museum, the pioneer cemetery billed as the oldest west of the Alleghenies, and the Lincoln Marriage Temple, which shelters the log cabin where Abraham Lincoln’s parents married.

★ Good to know The grounds are open year-round, but the fort and museum keep a shorter spring-to-fall season, so check before you go.

This brick building went up around 1845 as a women’s college, and Annie Bell Goddard turned it into an inn in 1918. Her descendants still run it, and it won a James Beard America’s Classics award in 2015. The kitchen is known for yellow-legged fried chicken, two-year-old Kentucky country ham and corn pudding.

★ Good to know The Old Owl Tavern and the Owl’s Nest pub are the easiest way in; the main dining room keeps limited, reservation-only meals.

Facing the courthouse on Chiles Street, Morgan Row is billed as the oldest row house in Kentucky, with its first units built in the 1810s. Over the years it has been a tavern and a post office. Its north unit now holds the Harrodsburg Historical Society and a research library of local records and genealogy.

★ Good to know The library keeps limited weekday and some Saturday hours, so call ahead if you’re coming to research family.

This is the spring James Harrod’s party settled beside in 1774, the start of Kentucky’s first permanent settlement. It became a park with a walking trail in 2017. It’s a short, easy stroll along the stream, right in town.

★ Good to know Pair it with Old Fort Harrod for a morning on the town’s founding.

Built in 1800 by Dutch Reformed settlers who came from Pennsylvania, this church has walls of vertical oak logs with mud and straw packed between them. It’s the first Low Dutch Reformed church west of the Alleghenies. The Harrodsburg Historical Society owns it, and Revolutionary War soldiers are buried in the cemetery beside it.

★ Good to know It sits south of town on Dry Branch Road; contact the Historical Society about seeing the interior.

This farm on Talmage-Mayo Road runs a corn maze, wagon rides, farm animals and a pumpkin patch each fall. Admission includes a pumpkin. Friday and Saturday nights run late, so you can do the maze after dark.

★ Good to know It’s a fall-only attraction, open weekends from about mid-September through the end of October.