Barn Hollow Nature Preserve

Views from Highway 1274

This is the view of Cave Branch Hollow as you approach from the north on highway 1274. You can see in the distance on the left where they begin to blast away the mountain to drop the road down to the level of the Licking River and Cave Run Lake.  About a quarter mile ahead on the left lies the forest service scenic pull-off which views Cave Branch Creek, Cave Run Lake and our land for sale.

As you cross the bridge and pass the scenic pull-off area you'll see a small opening on the east side of the road.  This entrance was dynamited open by the contractors that originally put in highway 1274.

From this point of view you are seeing the rise of the road on the south side of the bridge.  Immediately on the left is the entrance to the land.

This is the exact same point in the road as above except a photo towards the north going back down to the scenic pull-off and bridge.  In this case the entrance to the property is on the right.  You can just barely see the driveway entrance in this photo.

Pulling back a bit further from the same perspective you can see us standing in the driveway entrance.  In winter there are ice formations coming out of the rock walls.  When they melt in the spring there are incredible cracking and creaking noises that echo up this tunnel.

This shot is when standing in the driveway looking north down highway 1274.  You can see how they had to cut a 90 degree corner from the mountain to create this entrance.

Looking to the east you see the main gate to the property.  We share this entrance with the National Forest Service as they entered here to do some logging of the Danielle Boone National forest.  Our land has not been logged.  In 1992 the estimated wood value was over $10,000.

At one point we had a key to open this lock.  It has long since been lost so a new one would need to be obtained from the forest service.

I decided to take a hike up the hill and get a few camera shots looking over the cliff edge.  I was too nervous to get much closer than the following couple pictures.  There are quite a few loose rocks and falling off this edge would be a bad idea.

Although it's rather hard to tell from these pictures the drop is straight down about 100-150 feet to rock and pavement below.

You can tell from the vertical blast marks on the opposite wall what an enormous task it was in creating the road.

This photo was taken in 1992 during our second visit to the property.  At the time we were attempting to relocate to the area and place our own house on the land.