The Cumberland Plateau, part of the Appalachian range, stretches from Alabama to northeastern Kentucky, nearly all the way to the Ohio River. Carter County, which lies in the watershed of the Big Sandy River, is set near the edge of the plateau’s escarpment, and its landscape is typical of the region’s geology: sandstone whittled into sheer cliffs and mottled with lichen; boulders the size of houses tumbled among the trees and along the creeks; and underlying beds of limestone lying exposed to the weather.
On that plateau, northeast of Olive Hill and 4 miles beyond Interstate 64, I once left the country highway where it crossed Tygarts Creek and followed the smaller Cave Branch into a ravine that, in winter, left the cliffs of both sandstone and limestone draped with ice. The resulting icicles were far taller than me. Snow lay at the foot of the yellow poplars, the eastern hemlocks and the redbuds that, in only a few months’ time, would flower throughout the woods like flames.
Cave Branch carves a ravine through this forest. Once in this creek, in the late autumn, I saw a mountain madtom, Noturus Eleutherus, a member of the catfish family rarely seen though native to this drainage.
Along this ravine are caves—some shallow, carved out by streams flowing out of them from the subterranean depths; some far deeper, home in the winter to thousands of hibernating bats. On the ridges, out of sight, are sandstone arches. I have returned to this place again and again.
When one thinks of caves in Kentucky, Mammoth Cave instantly comes to mind. Mammoth is, after all, the longest known cave system in the world and a national park. When some of the caverns are big enough to drive a bus into, it makes sense that it is a tourist’s haven.
But Mammoth’s are not the only caves in Kentucky. When the geology of the state is founded mostly on limestone, resulting in karst formations—rock hollowed out by underground water into snaking caverns that can travel for miles—you can expect that caves will be abundant. At the edge of the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky, where the capstone is largely sandstone, the Commonwealth’s one state park dedicated to caves is largely hidden away among a few ravines that include several caves and other significant geologic formations.
The area that is now Carter Caves State Resort Park has, at one time or another, been frequented by visitors well into the past as the land traded hands between private landowners and investors. J.F. Lewis originally founded the Cascade Caves Company, a logging outfit that built cabins for visitors and used a gasoline-powered generator to light the caves. Drinking water was collected from the Saltpetre Cave and pumped to the ticket office that still stands today as the park’s gift shop. Lewis died in 1937, and, eventually, a local judge, R.C. Littleton, began a conversation with two Rotary Clubs—one from Grayson and the other from Olive Hill—that led to buying the land from Lewis’ company for $40,000.
During his term as governor in the 1920s, William Jason Fields—who was known as “Honest Bill from Olive Hill”—had championed the idea of donating lands for a park. Between the Rotary Clubs and the Lewis family, nearly 1,000 acres were donated to the Commonwealth. From 1948-1955, the state invested $600,000 for improvements. Smokey Lake was built for fishing and boating. The park is now around 2,000 acres and features more than 20 caverns, with four of them open for guided tours.
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Bat Cave is named, unsurprisingly, because it is home to not only bats but protected ones. An estimated 40,000 bats hibernate in the cave in the winter, which means the cave is open only in the summer. Great Saltpetre Cave is so named because saltpeter works once existed near the entrance, and saltpeter helped produce gunpowder during the War of 1812. The X-Cave consists of two intersecting caves—hence, the “X”—and contains impressive dripstone formations: stalagmites, stalactites and draperies. Cascade Cave, which was made part of the park in 1959, is home to a 30-foot-high waterfall. Each of these caves requires purchasing a tour to enter, and they vary from easy to difficult to navigate. Visitors can view two undeveloped caves on their own, Laurel Cave and Horn Hollow Cave, though they require permits to explore.
Though its caves make the state park a kind of Little Mammoth, its natural arches make it a smaller version of the nearby Red River Gorge. The park contains several significant arches, with some being easy to visit and some requiring excursions into the woods. The Natural Bridge, a short walk from the visitors center, is one of the most massive in the park. The Cave Branch flows entirely through it, an indication of how many arches in the mountains were formed. A sky hole opens in its towering ceiling, high enough to feel like a cathedral. “Bridge” is not a misnomer; the road into the park crosses the creek atop the arch.
To see the other arches requires hiking, which is one of this state park’s most welcome features. The park contains some 30 miles of trails in all. If the drive into the park isn’t enough to illustrate the Appalachian ecology and geology, following as it does the Cave Branch through the forest and past caves, the hike along the Three Bridges Trail will. The fact that the trail parallels the road and skirts along the row of cabins on the ridge is largely inconsequential; the park is, as long as I have visited it, enduringly quiet. The nearly 4-mile trail passes a soaring climbing wall of sandstone (where rock climbing requires a permit) and its namesake three arches: Raven Bridge, Smoky Bridge and Fern Bridge. A fourth, Shangri-La, is near the park’s lodge, and another, Cascade Bridge, sits at the head of a box canyon in nearby Cascade Caverns Nature Preserve, also a part of the park.
Other trails are more extensive and backcountry flavored. Many of them are in the outer reaches of the park, such as the nearly 9-mile Kiser Hollow Trail, which loops past two old homestead sites and ambles through the adjacent Tygarts State Forest. The 2.5-mile Cave Branch and the 3.6-mile Ridge Top Trail are even farther out, though all of these backcountry trails are to be either avoided entirely during hunting season or, if one is careful, explored while wearing blaze orange.
In the base of the valley just south of the Lewis Caveland Lodge is Smoky Valley Lake, a manmade lake created by damming Smoky Creek. Fishing is popular there (with largemouth bass, bluegill and catfish), and there is a boat launch. On the far side of the lake are two rustic campsites, accessible only to backpackers, which require permits to camp overnight and a reservation fee: Eagles Nest and Johnson Homeplace, both along the Carter Caves Cross Country Trail, which stretches more than 8 miles through the outer reaches of the park.
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As a state park, Carter Caves offers amenities beyond its natural wonders.
The comfortable and accommodating Lewis Caveland Lodge, constructed of fieldstone in 1962, consists of 28 rooms and a restaurant, Tierney’s Cavern, that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Guests also may opt for one of 12 cottages with kitchens and fireplaces. The campground hosts 90 sites for car camping plus 31 tent sites and eight equestrian camping sites. The Welcome Center, which dates back to 1925, features the gift shop and sells cave tour tickets. Picnic areas are scattered throughout the park, and visitors can take advantage of a pool, a laundry house, horse stables and a basketball court near the lake.
It is nice just to sit in the lobby by the fireplace, on whose stones are hung a portrait of Fields, the only Kentucky governor to come from Carter County. The park is, at least partly, his legacy.
I once spent a night with my daughter in the lodge. It was early in the morning of Nov. 8, 2022, when we stepped out on the balcony to see the fully eclipsed moon above the trees. The silence is most in my memory; that, and knowing that in the distance, just over the rise, was Shangri-La Arch, where she and I had explored the previous afternoon. Shangri-La is, to my mind, a fitting name for that country.