Kentucky

Long a shared hunting ground for the Shawnee, Cherokee, and Chickasaw rather than a permanent settlement site, Kentucky drew American frontiersmen through the Cumberland Gap in the late 1700s, led famously by Daniel Boone along the Wilderness Road. It became the 15th state on June 1, 1792, the first west of the Appalachians, straddling the cultural line between North and South during the antebellum decades.

Kentucky's fertile Bluegrass region proved ideal for raising thoroughbred horses and, thanks to limestone-filtered water, for distilling bourbon whiskey, an industry protected by federal law as a distinctly American spirit made largely within the state's borders. During the Civil War, Kentucky officially stayed in the Union while remaining deeply divided, supplying soldiers to both sides.

Today the state's identity rests on three pillars: the Kentucky Derby and its horse farms around Lexington, the Bourbon Trail's historic distilleries, and Mammoth Cave, the longest known cave system on Earth, still being mapped beneath its southern hills. Coal mining shaped Appalachian Kentucky's economy and culture for generations, and bluegrass music itself takes its name from the state.