A ONCE IN A LIFETIME PRE-MOUNTAIN EVENT
Honoring our past,
Inspiring our future
For half a century, the Mountain Workshops have helped shaped visual storytelling for countless numbers of individuals, and this year, we celebrate our anniversary! Join us in historic Maysville, Kentucky, on Monday, Oct. 20 to honor this legendary experience.
Come join us as we celebrate our 50th anniversary on Monday, Oct. 20 at 6:00 PM EDT and consider staying an extra day to witness our annual "hat-draw" and opening ceremony of the Maysville Mountain. All proceeds after expenses will go towards the Mountain Workshops Vision Endowment Fund.
  • MONDAY, OCT. 20
    An evening of celebration that honors the past and looks forward to the future of visual journalism education.
  • COX BUILDING
    Our 2025 Mountain headquarters
    THE COX BUILDING
    2 E. Third St
    Maysville, KY 41056
  • 6:00 PM EASTERN
    Festivities include Hors d'oeuvres and cocktails, comments, the premiere of "Through the lens of time" and strapping on the ole' feedbag of a classic Kentucky style dinner.
  • THE EVENING EMCEE
    One of the original lab staff directors Jonathan Newton, showing how a light table can provide fill light at the 1997 Russellville, Ky. Workshops will be your host.
  • SPECIAL GUESTS
    Former Mountain director Mike Morse, blessing the lab staff at the 1984 Albany, Ky. Workshop, will speak and other legendary dignitaries are rumored to make comments.
  • KEYNOTE PRESENTATION
    Longtime friend and coach of the Mountain, David LaBelle, getting a kiss from Jack Corn at the 1996 Workshop in Cambellsville, Ky. will discuss the role Mountain has had on community and industry.
Celebration Dinner
Join us Monday for a special evening celebrating half a century of Mountain love.
Oct. 20
Cocktail + Dinner
All proceeds after expense will go to the Mountain Workshops Vision Endowment.
$50
Cocktail Hour
Hors d'oeuvres and cash bar.
6:00 PM
THIS EVENT HAS LIMITED SEATS • RESERVE YOURS TODAY
LOCAL HOTEL OPTIONS
There are three hotels within walking distance from the celebration dinner. The faculty and staff are being lodged at the French Quarter Inn. The Lee House Inn and the Moon River Bed and Breakfast are also located in downtown Maysville. The greater Maysville area has many charming AirBNB options worth exploring and the Hampton Inn and a more budget friendly Quality Inn are just outside of town.
TRAVEL
If you are flying in for the event, the nearest airport is Cincinnati, Ohio. (CVG) and is 66 miles from Maysville or Lexington, Ky. (LEX) which is 72 miles away. It is always worth looking at other airport options to perhaps find better prices or connections but it can come with double the driving distance. You can consider Louisville, Ky. (SDF) at 137 miles from our headquarters. Another option would be Columbus, Ohio (CMH) at 127 miles away.
A brief history of the Mountain
Since 1976, the Mountain Workshops has been gathering stories of our shared history. This unprecedented visual collection of a rich past reveals the everyday life of the people and places that make our Commonwealth unique and truly, one-of-a-kind.
1976
WKU students and faculty member David Sutherland (left) gather for a group photo while documenting one room school houses in eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. This off-campus learning event laid the foundation to what has become an annual educational event for the past 50 years.
1979
Three short-years later, the off-campus learnign opportunity became a fall tradition at WKU as coaches from across the country began to come and share their knowledge with participants. In Clairfield, Tenn. students sit through a public critique of their work from Art Goldsmith, photo editor of Popular Photography Magazine.
1983
The Workshops continued to grow in popularity but still held on to its traditional roots of documenting people and their lives in rural communities focusing specifically on the Cumberland Gap region of Kentucky and Tennessee. The workshop took on the name Mountain People's Workshop as the locals of this region were known locally as Mountain People. Participant Gary Hairlson worked this scene in Morgantown, Ky.
1993
Being a few years ahead of the "multimedia" movement, the production team began collecting audio from participants and subjects to create end-of-week audio slide shows highlighting the images from the community.
1997
This year marked a historic shift as the Mountain Peoples Workshop name was changed to The Mountain Workshops as a result of a Knight Foundation grant that allowed us to scan negatives on location and offer our first year of the picture editing and book production workshop that coincided with the now 22-year-old photojournalism workshop. A book from each community has been published since then and shared with the town and the photojournalism community.
2002
The Mountain continued leading the industry in new technology use by turning the Glasgow Ky. year into our first all-digital camera workshop pushing the photographer, the picture editor, the coaches and our staff to the cutting edge of this new form of storytelling device. Because of the immediacy of this technology, we created our first live website from the community posting our images and stories online for the world to see.
2006
After 30 years of service, Mountain workshops director Mike Morse handed over the reigns to James Kenney, a WKU faculty member and Mountain Workshops attendee since 1993.
2007
The Mountain continued to flex its cutting-edge muscle by offering the first video workshop in 2007 in Danville, Ky. followed by time-lapse photography and digital story-telling workshops starting in 2013 - 2019.
2015
The Mountain turned 40-years-old in Frankfort, Ky., the state capitol, as its enrollment continued to accelerate making a shared experience at the workshop with visual storytellers from all walks of editorial creators from across the country and the world.
2020
The COVID epidemic may have shut-down the world but the Mountain continued strong offering a one-day long three lecture series ZOOM seminar on the state of the industry capturing a world-wide audience. In 2021 university travel was still being restricted so we held a remote nation-wide shooting workshop where participants worked in their own hometown and were coached remotely.
2025
In May the location for the 50th annual Mountain Workshops was announced to be held in historic Maysville, Ky.
KEEP THE LEGACY ALIVE
You want to help add to our scholarship opportunities and keep tuitions as low as possible so more visual storytellers have an opportunity to attend the Mountain? Your tax exempt donations can be given here!
In 1976, two Western Kentucky University faculty members took a dozen photojournalism students into eastern Kentucky and Tennessee to document the 11 remaining one-room schools there.

The teachers didn't realize it at the time, but that was the beginning of an annual trek designed to sharpen students' skills while documenting small towns in Kentucky and sometimes Tennessee.

Over time the effort morphed into the Mountain Workshops — four concurrent workshops that fine-tune photography, picture-editing, video story telling, and digital story telling skills of college students and mid-career professionals in an intensive weeklong effort that documents a town and its surrounding countryside.

WKU faculty members are joined by volunteer shooting, editing and writing coaches who travel here from across the country — from The New York Times, from the Los Angeles Times, from National Geographic and a host of other venues — to guide trainees and produce content for a photo exhibit, several multimedia productions, and a book of 100-plus pages.

From their humble beginnings of travel with cameras, black-and-white film and sleeping bags, workshops staff now spend months planning and setting up sophisticated facilities with state-of-the-art computing and digital imaging equipment.

Below is a list of the communities that have been documented since the Mountain began. A book has been published every year starting in 1997. Our recent online archive of the past 20 years is no longer available online, we apologize for this change in our website.
The 2020's
Leitchfield, Ky. | 2022
By Doug Brown
Maysville | Mason County
2025 | The 50th annual Mountain
Williamsburg  |  Whitley County
2024 | The 49th annual Mountain
October 22 - 26 |  Feels Like Home
Paris  |  Bourbon County
2023 | The 48th annual Mountain
October 24 - 28 | Horses. History. Hospitality.
Leitchfield | Grayson County
2022 | The 47th annual Mountain
October 18 - 22  |  A Community Devoted
Remote Nationwide
2021 | The 46th annual Mountain
October 19 - 23 | Storytelling Across America
COVID | Remote Lecture Series
2020 | The 45th annual Mountain
September 12 | Mountain Sessions
The 2010's
Cynthiana, Ky. | 2019
By Gabi Broekema
Cynthiana | Harrison County
2019 | The 44th annual Mountain
Mt. Sterling | Montgomery County
2018 | The 43rd annual Mountain
Morehead | Rowan County
2017 | The 42th annual Mountain
Paducah | McCracken County
2016 | The 41st annual Mountain
Frankfort, Ky. | Franklin County
2015 | Our 40th Anniversary
Berea | Madison County
2014 | The 39th annual Mountain
Owensboro | Daviess County
2013 | The 38th annual Mountain
Henderson | Henderson County
2012 | The 37th annual Mountain
Somerset | Pulaski County
2011 | The 36th annual Mountain
Elizabethtown | Hardin County
2010 | The 35th annual Mountain
The 2000's
Madisonville, Ky. | 2006
By Dana Rieber
Murray | Calloway County
2009 | The 34th annual Mountain
Mayfield | Graves County
2008 | The 33rd annual Mountain
Danville | Boyle County
2007 | The 32th annual Mountain
Madisonville | Hopkins County
2006 | The 31st annual Mountain
Lawrenceburg | Anderson County
2005 | Our 30th Anniversary
Lebanon | Marion County
2004 | The 29th annual Mountain
Bardstown | Nelson County
2003 | The 28th annual Mountain
Cave City | Barren County
2002 | The 27th annual Mountain
Hopkinsville | Christian County
2001 | The 26th annual Mountain
Bowling Green | Warren County
2000 | The 25th annual Mountain
The 1990's
Glasgow, Ky. | 1994
By Khui Bui
Central City | Muhlenburg County
1999 | The 24th annual Mountain
Franklin | Simpson County
1998 | The 23rd annual Mountain
Russellville | Logan County
1997 | The 22nd annual Mountain
Cambellsville | Taylor County
1996 | The 21st annual Mountain
Smithville, Tenn. | DeKalb County
1995 | Our 20th anniversary
Glasgow | Barren County
1994 | The 19th annual Mountain
Jamestown, Tenn. | Fentress County
1993 | The 18th annual Mountain
Columbia | Adair County
1992 | The 17th annual Mountain
Lafayette, Tenn. | Macon County
1991 | The 16th annual Mountain
Monticello | Wayne County
1990 | The 15th annual Mountain
The 1980's
Celina, Tenn. | 1984
By Mike Healy
Albany | Clinton County
1989 | The 14th annual Mountain
Everyone Knows Everyone Else
Russell Springs | Russell County
1988 | The 13th annual Mountain
On the Shores of Change
Liberty | Casey County
1987 | The 12th annual Mountain
One of the Best Little Towns
Scottsville | Allen County
1986 | The 11th annual Mountain
Edmonton | Metcalfe, County
1985 | The 10 year anniversary
Celina, Tenn. | Clay County
1984 | The 9th annual Mountain
Just a Quiet Little Town
Morgantown | Butler County
1983 | The 8th annual Mountain
Tompkinsville | Monroe County
1982 | The 7th annual Mountain
Burkesville | Cumberland County
1981 | The 6th annual Mountain
Closest Thing to Heaven
Burkesville | Cumberland County
1980 | The 5th annual Mountain
The 1970's
Bowling Green, Ky. | 1977
By Mark Lyons
Clairfield, Tenn. | Claiborne County
1979 | The 4th annual Mountain
Land Between the Lakes
1978 | The 3rd annual Mountain
Bowling Green | Main Street
1977 | The 2nd annual Mountain
One-room School House
1976 | The inaugural year