Oscar Getz Museum of Bourbon History

The story

From the outside, 1826 Spalding Hall in downtown Bardstown looks like an austere 19th-century brick college. Inside sits the obsessive, floor-to-ceiling lifetime stash of Chicago liquor executive Oscar Getz. Rather than slick modern multimedia displays, Getz built what local whiskey obsessives call pure whiskey archive material—a dense, unvarnished collection of thousands of rare antique hooch bottles, decanters, faded advertising, and clandestine distilling gear.

The real pull here is the paper trail and metal relics tracking America's hypocritical relationship with liquor. You can stand inches from Abraham Lincoln’s actual 1833 tavern license from his general store days in Illinois, then turn around to inspect authentic Prohibition-era medicinal whiskey prescription pads—the legal loophole doctors used to write pint-a-week orders for booze in the 1920s. Surrounding the paperwork are crude copper moonshine stills pulled out of Kentucky hollows and sealed pre-Prohibition bottles from distilleries that vanished a century ago.