Goose Creek Salt Works And Pioneer Village-Manchester, Kentucky

 

        

Jesse Cotton Cabin at Goose Creek, Photo by Kentucky Tourism

Today, July 6, 2023, my wife and I traveled to Manchester, Kentucky, primarily for two reasons: 1) to take a sizeable but short road trip and to buy Chow Chow from a Mennonite owned produce store in downtown Manchester.  I walk or do some other form of exercise every day of the year and when we are out of the house and the weather is decent I usually find a place to walk, a park, a sports venue, or some other setting.  Today, we wandered into the Goose Creek Salt Works and Pioneer Village just outside the heart of downtown Manchester.  We used to have a friend who lived in Burning Springs just north of Manchester but he has been dead for several years and we hadn't been back in Clay County for quite some time.  The site has a lot of historical value in the local area and in the history of the settlement of Kentucky.  There are about 4 log buildings on the site: two houses including the cabin in the photo above, another cabin, and two barns.  There is also a recently constructed stage with a couple of dressing or storage rooms which I assume is used for a variety of community events.  One of the cabins, the one above, can only be seen from the outside. The other cabin and the two barns are all accessible but have nothing in them.  One of the barns has a large livestock feed trough made from a hollow tree which is placed with the ends between the cracks in the logs.  But it is nearly six feet off the top of the ground and would have been inaccessible to any livestock except poultry or goats.  Perhaps it is placed that high to discourage possible thievery.  It is impossible to determine if it is of recent construction or authentic.  Sadly, a lot of cinder blocks have been used in setting the buildings up and they don't appear to be fully authentic for that reason.  There is a good two piece history of the salt works and setlement of the area with water proof text and photographic reproductions under a sheltering roof.  There are also two bronze plaques on the cabin above.  That is the entire Pioneer Village but it is worth seeing.

There is also a nice paved walking trail which runs along Goose Creek downstream beginning at the cabins with a sizeable grassy area which I assume is used for seating and perhaps picnicking during events.  The walking path becomes gravel a mile or more downstream from the cabins but it is nice and most of it can be accessed by a wheelchair.  But motorized vehicles are not allowed on the trail.  There is also a boat ramp and large picnic shelter downstream from the Pioneer Village which is accessible from the street.  But most of the trail is shaded by trees at least on the creek side and the lower portion is actually covered on both sides with birds and small game to be seen at times.  I encountered about a half dozen people while I was walking and my wife, who is in a wheelchair, stayed at the Pioneer Village reading while I walked and felt quite safe since the area is visible from nearby houses.  Happily, those houses don't literally adjoin the Pioneer Village.  If you are in Manchester and just want to eat lunch in a quiet spot or want to walk or see some history, it is worth the time.  You an also access Goose Creek in a couple of spots for fishing and I actually encountered one man who had ridden a bicycle to fish the creek.  I will probably walk there again if I am ever in Manchester which is as good a recommendation as I can give most places I visit for exercise. 

Hiking In Greenbo Lake State Park

 A few days ago on my birthday, one of the big ones, my wife, Candice, wanted to take me somewhere so I could hike in the woods and we could eat out which we haven't done much of in the last fifteen or eighteen months due to the Covid 19 pandemic.  The numbers in Kentucky hadn't quite fully turned the corner as they have now and we decided to take a chance since we are both fully vaccinated.  We had been to Greenbo Lake State Park once before and enjoyed that trip a great deal.  Greenbo Lake is one of the smaller man made flood control lakes in Kentucky.  The largest, Kentucky Lake has over 160,000 surface acres.  Greenbo Lake, at 225 acres, is not much more than a pond compared to the largest lakes which all have over 100,000 acres.  But it is a very pretty little lake with some really good hiking trails in the state park which contains it.  

 

Greenbo Lake State Park also has some historically important coke ovens, a restored one room school, and two unmolested small cemeteries which is unusual in the Kentucky State Park System.  I have written in other places on this blog about the relocation of graves during the construction of lakes and highways in the state.  I have hiked in numerous Kentucky state parks situated around lakes and nearly everyone I have ever hiked in has relocated cemeteries in them which usually were placed in a common government cemetery near or in the park.  I have also published a short story about the relocation of family cemeteries for the construction of a lake this past spring in Seeds 2021, the literary magazine from Northeastern Illinois State University.  My short story is entitled "Damn!" and can be found at numbered page 74 in the online journal at the previous link.  However, the page numbers in the online version do not synch with the page numbers in the table of contents.  That story is actually located at page 85 according to the internet counter.  

 But, let's get back to the hike at Greenbo Lake.  The park has three marked trails which come to a total of 32.8 miles of possible hiking without leaving marked trails and striking off into the woods with a compass or GPS.  I chose the trail which begins near the handicapped fishing pier not far from the boat launching and storage area because Candice has been in a wheelchair for over twenty years and wanted to read near the pier while I hiked for an hour.  I  rarely hike an entire trail anywhere but instead hike out for a little over a half hour and double back to wherever Candice is waiting for me and we always choose a safe location for her to stay.  This particular trail, so far as I hiked it for about 1.5 miles is within sight of the lake in the woods with a few relatively easy uphills and downhills.  I would rate that portion of this trail as easy.  I never saw another human on the trail except for one fisherman in a pontoon boat who happened to be fishing alone within sight of the trail.  He and I had a friendly conversation as he fished for a couple of minutes which was a unique experience for me while hiking to be able to talk to someone actively fishing although I have done it at Eagle Lake on the campus of my alma mater, Morehead State University.  I hiked outward for about 40 minutes and turned around which brought me out of the woods exactly on the one hour mark.  Early in the hike, I encountered the only interesting wildlife of the hike, a small black racer about two to two and a half feet long.  It froze when it saw me on the trail about ten feet above it.  I started to bend over to pick up a small peeble to toss near it to see how it reacted and it instantly turned and disappeared into the leaf mold below me even before I could grasp a pebble.  It was about 85 degrees at the time and any cold blooded animal such as a snake was in firm fettle for traveling on such a day.  I did not have a camera with me and do not have a photo of my little friend.  

After my hike, Candice and I returned to Grayson, Kentucky, to search for a place to dine inside which we hadn't done in quite some time.  After driving all over Grayson looking for an open dining room, we wound up at Huddle House which was the only one we could find with indoor seating.  We went in wearing masks, which is my suggestion to anyone in public until the pandemic is over.  The only people in the restaurant in early afternoon were the cook, the manager, and one waitress behind  the counter and one other couple eating in a booth well away from us.  So we took off our masks which is necessary if you intend to chew anyway.  The hired help was friendly and we talked freely about whatever popped up.  The manager said the day before had been his birthday and I mentioned that this particular day was mine.  A bit later an older man and a young boy who appeared to be his middle school aged grandson came in and sat down well away from us and also ate.  No one else came in the place during our meal.  We actually felt safe in the face of  Covid 19 in light of the low population, good social distancing, and our vaccination.  After eating, we drove back home and it was, according to all measurements, a day well spent. 

Hiking At The Twenty-Six Boat Ramp, Daniel Boone National Forest--August 29, 2019

Today, August 29, 2019, my wife Candice and I took a long drive in the country and I took two side trips to hike in the Daniel Boone National Forest and/or Cave Run Lake.  First I spent a half hour or so at the Twenty-Six Boat Ramp which is located just off Kentucky 772 about a mile or less from Kentucky 519 just about a mile from the Morgan/Rowan County Line in Morgan County.  Even though I have lived in the area for more than twenty-five years, I had never been to the boat ramp area in question.  I had actually arrived there by the long way around through the Kentucky State Tree Nursery and Woodsbend Youth Development Center in the Woodsbend area on Lower Grassy Creek.  It is a beautiful drive along that route through some of the best farm land in all of Morgan County.  There are numerous well maintained farms, the Tree Nursery and the Youth Development Center as well as three major, well maintained and photogenic cemeteries along the way.  The most interesting of those cemeteries is the Bear Wallow Cemetery. With a name like that, how could you avoid taking a drive along this wonderful scenic route?  

But once you arrive at the Twenty-Six Boat Ramp, a great deal of the beauty is lost due to abuses of the site by what seems to be a group of partiers from time to time combined with an overloaded Corps of Engineers who probably do not have the time or staff to adequately maintain all the public use facilities in the Daniel Boone National Forest.  The drive off Kentucky 772 to the boat ramp is tree shaded, scenic, and inviting.  It has a large gravel parking area, a concrete boat ramp, and lies on a tributary of Cave Run Lake.  All of this should have combined to make a wonderful location to hike, fish, kayak, launch boats, and simply eat a leisurely lunch on a work day.  But the ramp was poorly situated and is pointed upstream which means that a lot of debris ends up in the ramp launching area and at least one large log was visible in the water on one side of the ramp directly in front of the incoming boats which I suspect are few and far between since a far better situated and maintained ramp is located only a couple of miles away just across the line in Rowan County.  Between the parking lot and the water, there is an area which is about four feet lower than the parking lot and probably two feet above the normal water line.  But it is subject to periodic flooding when the Corps of Engineers is holding large amounts of water in the lake.  The normal amount of debris which would end up in area like that would be expected and workable.  But the people who have been using and abusing the boat ramp area have made a workable situation both disgusting and infuriating.  I hiked this area for quite some distance downstream along the waterside and found it littered from one end to the other with all sorts of garbage.  I usually carry a plastic grocery bag with me when I hike and pick up whatever litter I find in the locations I utilize no matter where they are, whether I have ever been there or not, and whether or not I ever likely to return.  But if I had the assistance and time today, I and a couple of friends could have easily filled the bed of my Ford Ranger with garbage which had been thrown about by the users of the area.  I actually found the remains of several camp fires and two them had the remnants of automobile tires in the ashes.  One had the steel belt wires from a large tire combined with beer and soft drink bottles, Styrofoam live bait containers, and general garbage.  And this particular camp fire was not the worst of the lot.  Another had not only the steel belt wires from a tire combined with its bushel of garbage.  It also had the steel rim from a large automobile tire.  In addition to these camp fires, the entire area was randomly littered with what were obviously fresh bottles and cans which showed no evidence of ever having floated in on the waters.  This entire area is a disgrace to every human who has ever helped to damage it.  

This area is tree shaded, quiet, inviting, and on the edge of the water.  It could be a wonderful site to use in a variety of ways.  But in its current condition, I am certain that it drives potential users away on a regular basis.  It is in dire need of a major clean up and regular policing from the Corps of Engineers and local law enforcement and yet I know that all these agencies are understaffed and overloaded.  The bottom line is that it is a damn shame and in desperate need of change on a major level. 

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After I left the Twenty-Six Boat Ramp area, I crossed the county line into Rowan County and turned right up the first paved road into an area which is part of the upstream lake and is used as a camping and hiking site.  I do not recall the particular name or number which is assigned to this road but it is the last left turn off Kentucky 519 in Rowan County before the bridge at the Morgan County line.  At about a half mile, you find several camp sites with rudimentary launching for small boats.  Then there is a locked gate across the road which is obviously the old state highway along the Licking River before it became a part of the lake.  The road is only a couple of feet above the water line and still in acceptable condition.  There area a plethora of spots along this road which could be used as lake shore fishing spots.  It is quiet, tree shaded, flat at least on the area I hiked, and a wonderful place to hike, fish, ride a bike, etc.  It is closed to vehicular traffic beyond the aforementioned gate. During my hike, I encountered a nice lady who was riding a vintage bicycle along the road and camping with her family at one of the camp sites.  She advised me that the road extends for roughly five miles or more along the lake shore and connects with another old road which climbs the mountain side to cross out of the Daniel Boone National Forest.  She also told me of a rumor that is rampant among users of the area that the Corps of Engineers is planning to lease that area to a vendor who is already renting kayaks on the lake for use as a paid camping, hiking, and multi-use area.  I tend to doubt the rumor but I will admit that it could be possible.  I hope to return to this area and spend more time and distance hiking it to see as much of it as I can.  When I do, of course, I will post about it on this blog.  

These two areas which I hiked today are well worth the time to utilize if you are in the general area.  I would also encourage all of you to contact the Army Corps of Engineers Office in Morehead and discuss the need to clean up and enforce civilized practises on the users of the Twenty-Six Boat Ramp.  If you utilize it, please take a camera along, which I did not do today, and shoot some photos of the egregious garbage, campfires with evidence of burnt tires, and pass them along to the Corps of Engineers. 

Minor E. Clark Fish Hatchery, Morehead, KY, July 8, 2019

On July 8, 2019, we took our nine year old nephew, Connor Nehlson, to the Cave Run Lake Spillway for a picnic, a hike and a visit to the Minor E. Clark Fish Hatchery just below the spillway.  I have known about the hatchery for at least twenty years but I had never visited it until a month or so ago while I was hiking at the spillway.  There is an old paved service road which runs between the hatchery and the dam and I figured that out by accident simply by following the service road until I found myself at the hatchery. That service road is an excellent place to hike, easy to hike, tree covered all its length, and it connects with the other hiking trails in the area of the Cave Run dam and spillway.  When I took Connor there, I took along my camera and got a few photographs around the hatchery.  The hatchery is comprised of a couple of what appear to be residential houses for senior staff, an equipment garage, and a large building which is both an office complex and the hatchery building itself.  In front of the office and hatchery building there is a large concrete holding tank which is used as a display tank in warm weather so that visitors can see specimens of several of the larger fish breeds which are either native to Kentucky or raised at the hatchery.  The tank is somewhat like a large livestock watering tank but considerably larger but only about three feet deep.  Most people, including children of eight or nine can see over the top of the concrete sides into the tank.  There are two or three species of catfish including two paddle bill catfish about three feet long.  There is also an albino catfish which must be about ten or 12 pounds.  There are also about a dozen large outdoor ponds in which fish are raised until they are ready for stocking.  There are gravel service roads around these ponds and I have hiked on them a few times but I am not certain whether hiking is actually permitted around the ponds or simply ignored by the staff. These ponds are also an excellent place to hike, absolutely flat but totally exposed to the sun, near several staff which increases the safety factor for at risk hikers, they attract several species of water birds, and the area is fully visible from more than a hundred yards away.  There are also three or four long, narrow, shallow concrete holding tanks in the ground between the buildings and the ponds which appear to be used for holding fish temporarily until they are transported for stocking.  

Paddle Bill Catfish In The Observation Tank--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

The hatchery does give indoor tours of the hatchery building between 7am and 3pm according to the state website.  There are actually three fish hatcheries in Kentucky but I have not visited the other two. The Minor E. Clark Hatchery at Morehead and the Peter W. Pfieffer Hatchery east of Frankfort are both operated by the state of Kentucky and raise fish species which are considered endemic to either cool or warm waters.  A federally owned hatchery is operated under the name Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery at Jamestown, Kentucky.  The Wolf Creek National Hatchery raises cold water species of fish such as trout. 

Connor At The Observation Tank--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

If you love fishing, icthyology, hiking, bird watching, or biology this will be an excellent place to visit. It can be educational, great exercise, and good, clean, fun. It can also teach you a lot about the fish stocking and individual species preservation efforts in Kentucky.  It is located less than ten miles from I-64 and can be accessed from the Morehead exit or the Sharkey/Farmers exit.  It is also only a mile or so from US60 and about the same distance from Pop's Barbecue which is an acceptable place to eat.  There are also motels between the hatchery and the interstate.  If you are in the Morehead area, you can combine a trip to the hatchery with fishing, boating, and hiking at Cave Run Lake.  You can also visit the Kentucky Folk Art Museum and Morehead State University, my alma mater, in nearby Morehead and make a day or a weekend trip out of it.  

Connor Nehlson At One Of The Concrete Fish Holding Tanks--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

"The Nick Adams Stories" by Ernest Hemingway--Book Review

Hemingway, Ernest. The Nick Adams Stories. (New York, NY, Bantam Books, 1972)

This has always been one of my favorite books and this is the second or third time I have read it from cover to cover.  I have probably read a few of the individual short stories in this collection such as "Indian Camp", "Big Two-Hearted River", and "The Last Good Country" a dozen times or more.  This book shows a side of Hemingway that is not the commonly understood man and writer in many ways.  The 24  stories are divided into five sections and arranged in something close to the chronological order in which they were written.  The sections, in order, are called "The Northern Woods", "On His Own", "War", "A Soldier Home", and "Company Of Two".  These sections are intended to present the stories as they fit into the key segments of Hemingway's life and also correspond fairly closely to the order in which they were written.  

The stories in "The Northern Woods" are all set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the character Nick Adams after whom they are entitled is generally conceded to be primarily an autobiographical presentation of a youthful Hemingway in the home of his father.  "Indian Camp" has always been one of my favorite stories by any writer.  It is direct, brutal but realistic, and shows Hemingway approaching the issue of suicide which was a major family issue with his father, brother, and several other family members either attempting suicide or succeeding in ending their own lives.  The short story tells the story of the doctor, his son, and an uncle attending the birth of a child in the home of a Native American couple in the Upper Peninsula.  The woman's husband is bound to his bed by a recent injury and they  are actually in a set of bunk beds during the childbirth.  At the end of the procedure, the doctor discovers that the father has quietly committed suicide in the upper bunk as his child is being born immediately below him.  The dialogue at the end of the story is some of the most linguistically simple and yet brutally powerful you will ever find by an writer anywhere.  The boy asks, 

"Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?"  

"Not very many, Nick."

"Do many women?"

"Hardly ever."

"Don't they ever?"

"Oh yes. They do sometimes."

"Daddy?"

"Yes."

"Where did Uncle George go?"

"He'll turn up alright."

"Is dying hard, Daddy?"

"No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick.  It all depends." 

When we consider the fact that both Ernest and Clarence Hemingway died by suicide by gunshot, we can almost visualize Ernest Hemingway, in Ketchum, Idaho, in the early morning hours of July 2, 1961, replaying that very dialogue in his mind as he loaded his shotgun to end his life.  I have always suspected that this section of dialogue from "Indian Camp" may well be the most purely autobiographical words Hemingway ever wrote.  But the stories are not all that dark and Nick Adams and his fictional father are not overly dark characters.  Nick Adams love to fish, hunt, drink, and have sex and those are three of the areas of life in which Ernest Hemingway wrote at a level which few writers ever achieve.  Some of the hunting and fishing language in these stories is pure poetry.  the sexual language is totally devoid of all those socially unacceptable locker room words so often found in the work of lesser writers.  But when Hemingway wrote about sex, he did not leave  his readers to wonder what he was talking about.  His meanings are crystal clear.  His language is admirable and accurate.  When he writes about any of these three topics, you know you are reading the work of an individual who has done sufficient homework on his topics to be considered an expert and a connoisseur.

"The Last Good Country" is a fascinating story about Nick Adams on the run from two local game wardens as a teenager in the company of his younger sister who is going with him to protect him from himself and his dangerous tendencies.  They are hiding in the "...last good country..." in the Upper Peninsula with streams full of hungry trout, berries to pick, warm beds of vegetation in which to sleep safely, and far too much country for two fat, liquor loving game wardens to ever find them.  The relationship between the siblings borders on things which most readers would not appreciate and Hemingway never crosses any of the lines which would make the difference for reader.  But he walks directly up to those lines, stares across at his doubting readers, and leaves answers hanging in the air to be considered, doubted, appreciated, and never found in the open.  It is also a wonderful story.  

 "Big Two-Hearted River" is, perhaps, the best known story in this collection but I would not go so far as to declare it flatly the best.  It is a wonderful story and is also one of my favorite stories both from Hemingway and from the greater body of American literature.  It is, on the surface, a fishing story about an isolated section of river which Nick Adams loves to fish in the Upper Peninsula but it also about a soldier returning home from war and remembering his friends in the war.  The fishing sections of the story are some of the best written descriptions of fishing from any writer, anytime, anywhere.  Isaak Walton would have been proud to know this version of Hemingway.  It is also a great story about a solitary person in a very solitary situation in a wilderness.  This story is one of those which no person should ever say they are a well read aficionado of either Ernest Hemingway or American Literature without having read. 

While the Nick Adams stories are not always the first of Hemingway's writing we hear mentioned, they are well crafted, introspective, autobiographical stories by and, at least in part, about a very complicated man.  They are well worth reading and rereading.