Regardless of what one may think about such massively intrusive mountain-moving alterations of the environment by mankind, the Pikeville Cut-Thru is certainly a fascinating mess. It's the second largest land-removal engineering project in the entire Western Hemisphere of the planet, ever, second only to the Panama Canal. Think on that.
The project was completed in 1987 and took over 14 years to do, at a total cost of 77.6 million dollars. It moved 18,000,000 cubic yards of rock and dirt. (I wonder where they moved it to??)
Supposedly, the project helped a lot of people avoid traffic congestion and flooding of the Big Sandy River. I don't live there so I don't know. But it sure is ugly. And I can't believe they planted rows of trees along those narrow stone shelf-cuts - once they grow to a certain height, they're going to start tipping over and tumbling down into the road, mark my words.
3 comments:
sad. just sad
The cut-through also rerouted the river, freeing a lot of land in the city for new development, as most of the usable land in the city was being used.
Well, we can't have people driving OVER or AROUND these things now, can we?
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