LORETTA LYNN LOOKED at the land and saw a home.
In 1966, the country music star and her husband, Mooney, were searching for a place to raise their six children away from the bustle of Nashville. Famously born in the coal-mining community of Butcher Hollow in the Appalachian hills of eastern Kentucky, Loretta wanted a place with wide-open spaces where she could disappear when she wasn’t working. One afternoon, on a drive about 70 miles southwest of Music City, she saw a stunning white house on a hill surrounded by woods and water.
“My grandmother fell in love with the home,” says Loretta’s granddaughter, Tayla Lynn. “She also fell in love with the land around it.”
When Loretta and Mooney inquired about the house, they learned it came with the town, which included an old grain mill, a general store and a post office. So, 56 years ago, to buy the house, the couple purchased the 3,500-acre community of Hurricane Mills, a peaceful place where the early-morning quiet was broken only by the throaty croak of the American bullfrogs lining Hurricane Creek, the meandering centerpiece of the town.
“When fans found out where they had moved, they started coming out to catch a glimpse of Memaw,” Tayla says. “So, my grandfather said, ‘Let’s build a campground.'” For the first few years, business at Loretta Lynn’s Dude Ranch was steady but slow. Until another family stopped by to camp in August 1981.
DAVE COOMBS LOOKED at the land and saw a dream.
He was out jogging one morning while his family was staying at the ranch. He ran through the valley’s horse pasture, along the shoreline of the creek, and stopped to take it all in. This was a great place for a race.
Dave, a tall, charismatic motocross promoter from West Virginia, had been harboring a dream for his sons, Timmy and Davey, and for talented young riders like them. An annual standalone amateur national in a central location where no one had a local advantage, a moto mecca where “everyone gets a championship experience no matter who they are,” Davey says.
Dave imagined a motocross track. More than that, he envisioned a summer…
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