How Loretta Lynn Accidentally Purchased an Entire Town: ‘We Didn’t Know It Until We Bought It’
Sometimes we end up with things we don’t want or need, and we might give them to friends or loved ones. Or we could tuck them away for the future possibility that we think of a use for them. But country star Loretta Lynn had no option for storing her inadvertent purchase after she bought a home she fell in love with, and then she learned that she was also the proud owner of the town it was in.
Lynn was born in Kentucky but became a star in Nashville, Tennessee. And once she’d established herself among the best of her time, she bought a big house, a chunk of land, and, as she found out, an entire town.
Loretta Lynn was born in a small coal-mining town in Kentucky
For anyone who doesn’t know, Lynn was born a coal miner’s daughter in a cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler, Kentucky. Her parents were poor, raising eight children on her father’s income as a coal miner. She married and became a mother as a young teenager.
Tumultuous as the relationship between Loretta Lynn and her husband Oliver was, she often gave him all the credit for her career. She sang to children but didn’t know she had star potential. But he saw that in her and pushed her to get on stage.
Eventually, Lynn’s singing and songwriting took them to Nashville, where she built a quick friendship with Patsy Cline. After Cline’s tragic death in 1963 and the birth of Lynn’s twins in 1964, the “Coal Miner’s Daughter” superstar was looking for a place to settle outside the city with Oliver and their six kids.
Loretta Lynn accidentally purchased the town of Hurricane Mills, Tennessee in 1966
Lynn told David Letterman in a Late Show interview how she came to own the that she ended up living in for more than 50 years until she died. As she recalled, she and Oliver drove by an “old southern mansion” she liked. They didn’t even know if it was for sale.
Ultimately, they purchased the home in 1966 after learning it belonged to a banker in Nashville, where she still lived before moving in. “We didn’t know the town come with it,” Lynn told Letterman, adding she “wasn’t interested in the town.”
Interested or not, the purchase included a general store, a post office, and a mill she turned into her museum and gift shop. Letterman asked her if she was the town’s queen, and Lynn coyly replied that Oliver wouldn’t have stood for that. “He kind of runs things since he’s there all the time,” she noted.
Loretta Lynn was still in her town when she died peacefully of natural causes in 2022
Lynn might not have meant to end up with Hurricane Mills in her ownership. But she never left it behind, even after Oliver died in 1996.
The country star slowed down after a stroke in 2017 and a broken hip in 2018. After she died at 90 in 2022, her family released a statement that read, “Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, Oct. 4, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills” (People).
