Exploring a Bullitt County Cave

Most people do not realize that Bullitt County actually has several good-size caves. Caves as much as a few hundred feet long, with domes as much as twenty feet or more.

On July 10, 2009, a group consisting of David Strange, Jose' Rosario, Michael Eddington, Larry Lee Kitterman, Jr., and Jacob Marshall explored one of those caves.

Most all of the known caves in Bullitt County are on private land. The owners rightly try to keep the locations secret in order to prevent damage to the caves, and injury to unprepared cavers. We honor that request here by not saying the exact location of the cave we explored. We were invited to come, and obtained permission from the owner before going onto the site.

I know of three pretty major caves in the county. Caves with rooms at least large enough for a small group of people to stand up in. Caves that also have enough hazards that an unprepared explorer could easily get injured. So beware.

The known caves in Bullitt County are widely scattered throughout the Eastern half of the county, to my knowledge all to the east of Interstate 65.

The one we explored was in southern Bullitt, fairly near Lebanon Junction. It was about one thousand feet long, fairly straight, with an entrance/exit on each end. A nice little stream flowed throughout. I suspect it would be a raging stream in rainy weather. Though probably an easy trip for a real caver, it was difficult for us beginners, especially those of us with a few years on us. One end of the cave had a "fat man's misery" spot where we had a choice between a tempting narrow (maybe ten inches) route of travel, or a difficult and slippery climb up and over the "misery" spot through a small tunnel-like channel. That soon entered into a nice-size room, maybe eight feet tall, with plenty of room for all of us. We then traveled through several twisting turns, enjoying several nice stalactite/stalagmite formations along the way. My favorite was actually a room, maybe just six feet tall or less, that had its ceiling covered with countless stalactites that were a half inch long or less. Each one of these had a beautiful little crystalline clear drop of water on the end. Something about that water made all of the droplets sparkle in the light of our flashlights. For me it was almost dazzling.

Though vaguely aware of how long the cave was, some of us were getting tired and a bit nervous as to just how much further we had to go. We turned off our lights for a moment and saw dimly the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel up ahead. For most of us, this last hundred feet or so was difficult, because it dropped down to about four feet tall or less, with a rocky stream flowing along the bottom.

But we made it out and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, though it took a few days for my old legs to recover.

Many of us know about sinkholes scattered around the county. I expect that there is some sort of cave at the bottom of every one of them. As I say, there a few good caves in Bullitt County that are known to exist. I wonder what others might be down there that we don't know about, just because there is no entrance large enough for a human. Just a while ago, I am told, a small section of land off Armstrong Lane collapsed, creating a rather large new sink hole where there had been none. There had to have been a large cave room underneath for that to happen. As I often say about artifacts, I now say about caves: "It's no telling what lies just below our feet".

Dave Strange

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