High Rock Petroglyphs

Located in Nada, KY in Powell County, the High Rock petroglyphs are one of several mysterious rock carvings indigenous to the area. They're said to be made by very early Native Americans, though there are other theories about people from other lands having traveled through this region, as well as the legends of the ancient civilizations that dwelled in Kentucky even before the tribes we call Native Americans.

Pictured here is a piece of the High Rock petroglyphs, currently on display at the Red River Museum in Clay City.

Hampton Court

Hampton Court in Lexington is a quaint little ritzy neighborhood of older houses, set off to itself like a walled medieval keep. But what many of the upper-crust residents here may not be aware of is that a very old orphanage once stood on this site. Poltergeist have been reported in at least two of the homes here, and the possibility of a connection to the orphanage can't be ignored.

The Twin

Here's another installment in our ongoing obsession with old retro ice cream stands.

Still hanging in there since the 1950's without changing its appearance hardly at all in the intervening years, The Twin is a breath of fresh air that you'll find on River Drive in Irvine, KY. Their soft-serve tastes unlike any other I've ever had.

The other major 1950s ice cream stand in Irvine was The Zesto and sadly no longer exists, having closed down many years back. (There are still a few other Zestos still surviving out there, like in Indiana and South Dakota.)

The Twin is about 60 seconds walk from Irvine Cemetery, incidentally, so have a cold frozen treat while you go grave-spotting.

The 76th Operating Mormon Temple

One of the most unique and visually striking buildings in Oldham County is this Temple for the Jesus Christ Church of Latter Day Saints. It has the authentic look and feel of an old marble Temple but was actually built in the year 2000.

The Temple is also known as the 76th Operating Temple, and/or the "Louisville Kentucky Temple", even though it's not actually located in Louisville. According to the LDS Church Temples website:

Elder John K. Carmack of the Seventy and president of the North America East Area who presided over the groundbreaking services for the Louisville Kentucky Temple, spoke on the importance of temples in the life of the eternal family. Joseph Smith was intensely interested in the work of temples in the later years of his life, he noted. Having built the Kirtland Temple, laid the groundwork for two temples in Missouri, and nearly completed the Nauvoo Temple, the Prophet was "preoccupied" with temples and seeing that the Quorum of the Twelve had received the ordinances. Elder Carmack pointed out that "the way we live here has consequences in the next life." He then quoted Hugh Nibley in saying that ordinances create order from chaos, and that like an observatory, the temple helps one get a bearing on the universe.

The exterior of the edifice is white marble (quarried in Vermont) with a solid gold statue of the angel Moroni on its spire. Joseph Smith said this angel visited him on September 22, 1823 and several other subsequent occasions.

Jackson Lane

Jackson Lane is a nice creepy little road in Big Hill, KY, less than half a mile from the Big Hill itself. It winds deep into the hills and dead-ends at a clearing in the wilderness where a small wooden stage sits under a tree, looking sort of like the kind of stage one might see at a political rally.....evidently there was some sort of event held here at one time.There are gravel roads and truck-made paths going deeper into the woods but we have not explored those.

There's also a very nice old abandoned house almost completely obscured by foliage in the summertime. Jackson Lane is a great road to go parking on at night although the area has a very eerie feel to it, like you're being watched.

If the legend is to be believed, Squire Boone passed through this area in 1770 and carved his name on a large rock in hopes that Daniel Boone would see it and know that Squire was back in Kentucky. The rock is now on display in Richmond's Courthouse.

Salem Cemetery

According to a rather dubious online source, if you drive by the Salem Cemetery (also known as Gilead Cemetery) at night, you can see "two orange colored eyes looking at you", and also that the site where the Salem Baptist Church currently stands was once home to a "Satanic Church".

We have difficulty swallowing that, but there is a very creepy energy to this place, and there are a lot of interesting graves that make my internal spook-o-meter point north. Several of them hint at unusual or tragic deaths, like the graves of the daughters of Squire and Lizzie Williams - which bear the birthdate but list the death date as "unknown". This often indicates some sort of circumstances where the bodies were found a long time after death, making the exact year of death uncertain.

Interestingly, Squire's grave is also in the cemetery, but Lizzie's is not.

To get to Salem, KY (this is the one in Madison County, not the one near Paducah) you follow the old Barnes Mill Road out to the fork in the road (at a bridge over a creek with a waterfall). Take the left fork over the bridge and just keep going. You'll see the cemetery on your right after about 10-15 minutes.

Red River Dairy Freeze

Here's another installment in our ongoing obsession with old retro ice cream stands.

The Red River Dairy Freeze, as its name would imply, is near the Red River Gorge in Clay City, KY. 4990 Main Street, to be precise.

Down the road a piece in Stanton, there used to be this place called Danny Boy's, but I'm not sure it's still there. I haven't been out that way in awhile and I wasn't able to find any mention of it in a Google search. Any of our readers able to confirm?

Note that both places use the same fluorescent tube bug-light.

Cree-Mee

Old-school retro ice cream stands, while not quite as endangered an American species as the Drive-in theater, are nevertheless gradually vanishing from the landscape. May the iconic resonance of the walk-up ice cream stand continue to survive in the 21st century.

This one, Cree-Mee, can be found in Stanford, KY and is highly recommended. Last time I was there, I had a banana shake and some french fries that tasted strangely like buttered corn; in other words, amazing.

Lexington Cemetery Fungus

On Saturday, April 24, 2004, this bizarre fungus - at least we think it's a fungus - was spotted covering part of this tree stump in the Lexington Cemetery. It's day-glo orange, pulpy with a gelatinous surface, and white foam congealed around the top.

We did a quick Google search for "orange fungus" and didn't find anything that seemed to match the mystery muck. The closest thing we found to it was Cedar Apple Rust, a fungus that creates small (not enormous) orange growths on leaves (not stumps) on Cedar Apple trees (which this tree is not).



Anyone out there have any identification of this strange and frightening goo?

Arnold Dunaway

Gravestones that tell something about the person are very rare, and it's even rarer when they actually tell how the person died. That makes the grave of Arnold Dunaway special in itself, but doubly so because he was apparently a race-car driver of some reknown back in the 1950s. According to the stone, Dunaway died in a crash at Eldora Speedway in Ohio.

Dunaway's grave is in a small cemetery in Winston, KY.

1878 Cave Mummy Discovery

From the Freeborn County Standard, July 18, 1878:

"The Glasgow Junction, (KY.) correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial says: "Another wonderful cave has recently been discovered near this town. It has already been explored for a distance of twenty-three miles in one direction, called the long route, and sixteen miles in another direction, called the short route.

"The avenues are very wide, a span of horses can easily be driven through for a distance of eleven miles. Three rivers, wide and very deep, are encountered on the long route. One of them is navigable for fourteen miles, until the passages become too narrow to admit a boat. This forms the third, or river route, which has to be explored in a boat.

"This cave is wonderful beyond description, and far surpasses in grandeur the Mammoth, or any other cave ever before discovered. Several mummified remains have been discovered in one of the large rooms. They were reposing in stone coffins, rudely constructed, and from appearances, they may have been in this cave for centuries. They present every appearance of the Egyptian mummies.

"Great excitement prevails over this very important discovery. Mr. Edwin Mortimore, of Chestnut street, Louisville, Ky., purchased three of the mummies, and has them now in his possession.

"Maj. George M. Proctor, of Glasgow Junction, Ky., purchased the remainder of the mummies from the owner of the cave, whose name is Thomas Kelly. He is, or rather was, a few days ago, a very poor man, struggling to make a payment on a farm of twenty-four acres, upon which, by mere accident, the entrance of this wonderful cave was discovered.

"He realized about $400 from the sale of the mummies, and is now offered $10,000 cash for the cave.

"The entrance to the cave is within the town limits, and is only about two minutes' walk from the depot, which makes it very valuable indeed, as visitors will not be compelled to travel five miles in a stage coach, as they do if desirous of visiting Mammoth cave, which is five miles from the town. In fact, all the celebrated caves of Kentucky are located in this immediate vicinity. The surface is very much broken, full of great elevations and depressions, with everything to indicate that there were volcanic eruptions or violent upheavals of the earth at some period."

So exactly what cave is being referred to here? And where are these mummies now? And who the heck is Edwin Mortimore?

Bybee Pottery

Bybee Pottery is the oldest continuing pottery business west of the Alleghenies, and their primitive and rustic pieces have a considerable following around the world. Even in Japan, there are collectors who know of the work done in this ancient building that looks much as it did when the business began in 1809. Unlike many attractions whose patina is faked for the tourists, this place is the real deal.

Many who have purchased Bybee's creations around the world are shocked to find this global empire is still run from this tiny run-down shack in rural Kentucky.

Bybee also happens to be part of a concentrated cluster of small spot-in-the-road towns between Richmond and Irvine, with great local reputations for hauntings: Bybee, Moberly, Robinsville, Estonia, Drowning Creek, Sand Hill, Panola, Speedwell, Brassfield, Waco, College Hill, Winston, and Wisemantown.

A number of other Kentucky potteries, spurred on by Bybee's success, also operated in this region for many years. The most famous was Waco Pottery (actually, there were three different Waco Potteries and one was actually connected to Bybee Pottery itself, but that's another story), whose creative glazes and shapes often rivaled those of higher-end companies like Teco or Van Briggle.

Rumors are, Bybee Pottery may close its doors in a few years. Being family owned and operated, they're reluctant to turn the project over to anyone else if the next generation in their family doesn't want to take it over - and word is, they don't. So visit this American cultural landmark sooner, not later, before its reign of two centuries comes to an end.