Golden: Kacey Musgraves Childhood Home

Tucked into the rolling pastures of Golden, Texas — a Wood County hamlet with more cows than people — sits a modest 935-square-foot, two-bedroom cottage that quietly shaped one of the most celebrated voices in American music. This is where Kacey Musgraves grew up, where she learned to play mandolin before picking up a guitar at age 12, and where, at around nine years old, she sat down and wrote her very first song, “Notice Me,” for her elementary school graduation. The porch, she has said, was her first stage.

The property has been in the Musgraves family for more than 100 years, with the family putting down roots in the area around 1909. Kacey was born in nearby Sulphur Springs and raised in Golden, the eldest daughter of Karen and Craig Musgraves — an artist and a print shop owner, respectively, based in neighboring Mineola. The land itself witnessed more than a century of the family’s births, deaths, marriages, and everyday human struggle before it ever witnessed a Grammy acceptance speech. It is, as Musgraves has described it, its own little world away from the world.

After her grandmother’s passing, Musgraves saved the property from being sold outside the family around 2014. Her first act of stewardship was a distinctly Kacey one: she painted the petite cottage in pastel pink to honor her grandmother’s memory, then spent considerable time restoring it from the inside out, preserving original details while adding personal touches throughout. The interior took on a vintage, floral, country-chic character. And on the porch ceiling — where most Southern homes would display the traditional haint blue — Musgraves had a replica of the Texas state flag painted instead, supported by classic carved roof balustrades. Home state pride, rendered in paint.

The home surged into the cultural spotlight in 2026 when Musgraves partnered with Zillow to offer fans a virtual tour ahead of the May 1 release of her seventh studio album, Middle of Nowhere. The album’s title itself came from the town: Musgraves spotted a sign reading “Golden, Texas: Somewhere in the middle of nowhere” while wandering around with friends, and the phrase shaped the ethos of the entire record. Golden wasn’t just a backdrop — it was the muse.

For fans making the pilgrimage to Wood County, the home is private property on approximately 40 acres of rural land outside town, so visits should be respectful of that. But the surrounding community — including Mineola, a short drive away where her parents’ print shop and art gallery still operate — offers a genuine sense of the East Texas world that made Kacey Musgraves who she is. This is the middle of nowhere that produced someone unmistakably somewhere.