The William Whitley House, built between 1785 and 1794 by Colonel William Whitley and his wife Esther along the Wilderness Road near Stanford, Kentucky, served first as the family's residence and is recognized as the earliest brick home built west of the Appalachian Mountains. Because Native American raids remained a real danger on the Kentucky frontier during its construction, the house doubled as a fortified refuge, incorporating a concealed staircase and a windowless kitchen with a false ceiling that gave the family a hidden space to shelter in. Beyond domestic use, the property encompassed Sportsman's Hill, a half-mile clay racetrack Whitley laid out around 1780, believed to be the first circular horse-racing track in Kentucky and among the earliest in the country. Whitley deliberately ran races counter-clockwise and used clay rather than turf, a conscious break from British racing convention. The house and track became a social and political hub for the region, hosting fall race meetings that drew prominent frontier visitors, reportedly including Daniel Boone and George Rogers Clark, along with the lavish breakfasts that followed dawn races. The racetrack's sporting use continued for decades before ending around the time of the Civil War. The property stayed in family and private use afterward until it entered the Kentucky state park system in 1938, with restoration work following between 1948 and 1955. Today the house operates as a state historic site and museum interpreting frontier domestic life, early Kentucky architecture, and the surrounding racetrack grounds, with day-to-day management passing to Lincoln County Fiscal Court in 2019.