Waveland State Historic Site, Lexington (must see)

Waveland State Historic Site, also known as the Joseph Bryan House, in Lexington is the site of a Greek Revival home and 10 acres now maintained and operated as part of the Kentucky state park system. It was the home of the Joseph Bryan family and their descendants in the nineteenth century. Bryan's father William had befriended Daniel Boone and they migrated west through the Cumberland Gap.

Joseph Bryan, William's grandson, became an early planter here and established a plantation for tobacco and hemp as commodity crops. He also began to breed thoroughbred race horses.

In 1957, Waveland was adapted as a house museum. Its exhibits depict and interpret Kentucky life from pioneer days to the Civil War. Ten acres are included with the house property, which has been renovated and furnished to show antebellum life on a plantation during the 1840s. Period-appropriate furniture was donated to the site.

Waveland's buildings include the mansion, decorated in antebellum style, and four outbuildings: the ice house, a two-story brick building that was the slave quarters, a barn, and a smokehouse.

Tours are given daily for much of the year, and tour guides dress in the style of the 1840s. Tours include the historic house, the slave quarters, smokehouse and ice house. They focus on the Bryan family and life on a 19th-century Bluegrass Kentucky plantation.