Valley of Parks
If Dr. Walker, the English explorer, should return to the earth today and visit the Big Sandy country near the point where he first entered the state of Kentucky, he’d be amazed at the sight which would greet his eyes. Cities have sprung up where once was wilderness. Yet one natural beauty of the country remains unchanged: the great gorge made by Russell Fork of Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy, breaking through the mountain at an elevation of 2800 feet—The Breaks of Big Sandy. Here in the days of the Civil War many thrilling episodes took place and through The Breaks a Confederate regiment trekked back to Virginia leaving behind a string of Democratic counties in its wake.
Recently added to Jefferson National Forest, another link in the chain of Park-to-Park highways, The Breaks of Big Sandy is the most picturesque and historic spot in eastern Kentucky. It is located on State Route 80, just thirty miles from Pikeville where many of the McCoys live peaceably today. Kentucky, with the mother state Virginia, is planning a better and broader highway to The Breaks, which will readily connect it with the Mayo Trail. And the native sons still dwelling in the hills, aided by their neighbors representing them in state and federal offices, are busily planning an improvement program for the area in which The Breaks are embraced.
Once the Dark and Bloody Ground, Kentucky today is fairly teeming with reawakening. Her people are hastening to bring from hidden coves things once discarded as fogey. “We aim for this generation to know how thrifty and apt their forbears were,” is frequently heard from their lips. In historic Levi Jackson Wilderness Road State Park (U. S. 25), near London, there is an old cider press. Far back in 1790 William Pearl, one of the early settlers in Laurel County, made and set up the crude press for making cider, or brandy if he chose. The press rests on a stone base five feet wide. Happily, Pearl’s great-grandson was wise enough to preserve the relic and present it to the park. Within the park also is Frazier’s Knob, the highest point in the state of Kentucky. On the banks of Little Laurel flowing through the park one may see an old-time watermill in full operation. And if you have a bit of imagination you’ll wait your turn and take home a poke of meal and have cornbread for supper.
Through this region—now The Valley of Parks—Boone blazed his famous trace and Governor Shelby built the first wagon road through the wilderness from infant Kentucky to Mother Virginia. Along the way a pleasant reminder of an almost forgotten past is that of the Wilderness Road Weavers busy at loom and wheel. They process cloth from wool and flax before your eyes and explain with care the art of making homemade dyes from herb and bark. An older woman pauses with shuttle in hand. “See the hollow tree off yonder, a mother and her babe hid there to escape the Indians. And the cabin over there with the picketin’ fence around, that’s our library now and we’ve got all sorts of curiosities there too.” A visit within reveals the curiosities to be relics of early home arts and mountain industries.
Cumberland Falls, Kentucky’s Million Dollar State Park, of 593 acres, was a gift of T. Coleman du Pont and family of Delaware; its chief attraction is the Falls, once called Shawnee, with the profile of an Indian plainly to be seen in jutting rock over which the roaring cataract plunges near Corbin and Williamsburg. In this once Dark and Bloody Ground there is amazing beauty; on July 1st, 1941, Mammoth Cave, the twenty-sixth National Park, was dedicated with imposing ceremonies, adding another link to the Park-to-Park plan. If it had not been for the saltpeter from this cave the Battle of New Orleans would have been lost, for from this mineral gunpowder that saved the day was made. So vast is one of its caverns, the Snowball Dining Room, 267 feet underground, that hundreds of members of the Associated Press held a dinner there in 1940. Mammoth Cave is reached by U. S. Highway 70, west from Cave City, and one hundred miles south of Louisville. The vast national park of which it is a part is watered by the Green River, known to early explorers.
Kentucky’s most talked-of cave in recent years is that in which Floyd Collins lost his life in 1925. The tons of rock in Sand Cave under which he was trapped did not cause his death, however. Collins died of pneumonia. His body now lies buried in Crystal Cave, which was Floyd’s favorite of all those he had spent his life in exploring.
One travels cross country from Crystal Cave to the Blue Grass on Russell Cave Road, along with some of the 45,000 other people who have come within a single year to see Man o’ War, the most famous race horse of all times. “The Blue Grass region of Kentucky,” says Prof. E. S. Good, head of the department of animal husbandry of the University of Kentucky, “is the premier breeding ground for light horses because of its ample rainfall, mild climate, abundance of sunshine and a soil rich in calcium and phosphorus, so necessary to produce superior bone, muscle and nerve.”
Though mountain men are proud to own a good pair of mules and will praise the merits of this lowly beast without stint, they generally know or care little about blooded race horses. They take pride in less glamorous possessions. For instance, they are proud that in their midst the McGuffey Readers were still taught by an aged schoolmaster in defiance of legislation which barred the classics and that the little log school in which he taught is the first and only shrine in Kentucky to the illustrious educator, Dr. William Holmes McGuffey, who compiled the Eclectic Readers which gave the children of America a different, brighter outlook upon life back in those dark days of Indian warfare. The McGuffey Log School shrine stands not far from the mouth of Big Sandy River in Boyd County. Each year hundreds of McGuffey enthusiasts make a pilgrimage to the humble shrine of learning.