Kentucky, rich in minerals, fertile soil, varied forests, and diversified products, is also a land where Nature has been lavish with her curiosities.
Some of the most important natural curiosities are the following: In Boone County there is Split Hill, where a deep zigzag path of great extent has been formed; in Breckinridge County there is Sinking Creek, a stream so large and powerful that it drives machinery the entire year; at a point about six miles from its source it disappears and shows no trace for more than five miles, when it reappears and flows into the Ohio. As early as 1847, a Mr. Huston utilized, for a mill erected on this stream, a natural dam of rock, eight feet in height and forty feet in width.
In Carter County there are also two smaller streams that flow for some distance underground. In the same county, in early days, there was an artesian well that threw up a jet, about the size of a barrel, to a height of four feet.
Christian County contains also some sinking streams, forks of Little River, beside Pilot Rock, which rests upon elevated ground, has a comparatively level summit, covers about one half acre of ground, and is about two hundred feet high. This county also contains a natural bridge, which crosses a deep ravine with an artistic arch of sixty feet, and is thirty feet in height.
Picturesque falls, ninety feet high, are found in Clinton County, while "Rock House," forty feet high and about sixty feet square, is located in Cumberland.
In Edmonson County, besides the wonderful Mammoth Cave, there is "Dismal Rock," almost perpendicular and one hundred and sixty-three feet high.
In Grant County, for many years an object of great curiosity, was an immense poplar tree, nine feet in diameter; it is said a man on horseback, after it lay prostrate, could barely touch the top of the trunk with the tips of his fingers.
A natural fortification, a circular tableland, from fifty to one hundred and twenty-five feet high, impossible of ascent except in one place, is an object of great interest in Hancock County.
In Jessamine County, amid awful grandeur and gloom, the Devil's Pulpit is found, with a total elevation of three hundred feet.
In Lincoln County the Knobs, some with a base one hundred and fifty yards in diameter, two hundred feet high, and entirely destitute of vegetation, attract great attention.