Karst Conservancy's Cavernous Concert

A couple summers ago, I lamented here that Bluegrass concerts inside Rockcastle County's Great Saltpetre Cave, once a great Kentucky tradition, are no longer being performed.


Good news for modern man: the Bluegrass is back! Coming this August, the Music in the Mountain fundraising show will finally put the cave's Echo Auditorium, a huge underground chamber that makes a perfect concert hall, to good use again. The show will feature music by the Renfro Valley Performers doing their "Front Porch Pickin' Show", and the proceeds go to helping maintain and preserve the region's amazing caves and karst.

The show is August 20 at pm, and tickets must be purchased in advance. Call 800.765.7464. Map and directions are here.

(photo at top by Nathan Williams.)

Carl Hurley Lane

Kentucky comedian Carl Hurley now has a street named after him in London, KY.

The former Eastern Kentucky University professor, perhaps best known for his best-selling book We Weren't Poor - We Just Didn't Have Any Money, recently had "Carl Hurley Lane" dedicated in his honor, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in front of Weaver's Hot Dogs on London's Main Street.

Hurley, who was born in East Bernstadt, is world renowned for his gentle, easygoing rural storytelling style, an example of which can be seen on YouTube by clicking here. He's been a regular on the Grand Ole Opry and Renfro Valley, and is currently finding popularity with a whole new younger audience on XM Satellite Radio.

The Great Saltpetre Cave

Discovered in the late 18th century, the Great Saltpetre Cave was immediately utilized for its mass quantities of saltpetre, which was used to manufacture gunpowder. According to Wikipedia:

During the War of 1812, sixty to seventy men were employed to mine the cave of its saltpeter, deemed necessary as British blockades prevented saltpeter shipments from overseas. Many of the workers at the cave were slaves. To a lesser degree the cave was also mined during the Mexican-American War and the Civil War.

For a time, ending in the 1970s, Great Saltpetre Cave was a commercial cave, and was open not only for tours, but also for ballroom dances, a museum, and weddings. However, the guests would often damage the cave formations by taking souvenirs.

You can't believe everything you read on Wikipedia, however. The Great Saltpetre Cave actually continued to be available for weddings, and for a yearly Mother's Day event, right up into the 1990s.

Today the Great Saltpetre Cave is owned by the Rockcastle Karst Conservancy, as part of the 300-acre Great Saltpetre Preserve. Sadly, Bluegrass concerts, as shown in the photo above, are no longer held there. The Renfro Valley Barn Dance held its inaugural radio broadcast in the cave in 1939.