Big Bone Lick State Park, Union, KY; May 16 to 23, 2016

Another new state and park for us, Big Bone Lick is an interesting place but would not normally rank high on our list of best campgrounds. The sites are short with no buffer between them, and it's like being in a fishbowl; however, the park is well-kept, attractive, and we saw a number of deer wandering through the campground. Throw in the buffalo herd, the museum, and history, it moves way up the list. It's also close to good grocery stores and lots of other shopping, so we can deal with the less than perfect campground.

The small museum in the park has beautifully prepared exhibits featuring some of the bones and artifacts found on site as well as lots of information. There are plans for expansion of the museum, and we will try to return when it is finished.

There is also a trail that leads around to the salt water creek where the bones were found and which Native Americans traveled to in order to collect salt. A monument stands at the Visitor Center to Mary Draper Ingles: “In the summer of 1755, Virginia settler Mary Draper Ingles was captured by Shawnee warriors and brought to their village near present-day Portsmouth, Ohio. In the autumn of the year, Ingles and other captives were taken to collect salt at this Lick where they observed the big bones.

“While there, Ingles and another woman prisoner escaped from their Shawnee captors and hiked eastward in increasingly colder weather for forty days. Part of the path the women traveled is not Kentucky route 8, or Mary Ingles Highway.

“Mary was found by Adam Harmon, an acquaintance of Ingles, but Mary's fellow escapee was not with her.”

After reading the text on the monument, I purchased the book “Follow the River” by James Alexander Thorn. The author writes in the first chapter that in order to get a feel for the story, he "spent many weeks retracing Mary Ingles' steps through the mountains..." "Toward the end of my familiarization with that terrain, I climbed over the palisade cliffs she traversed on the last day of her odyssey. ... the pillars of the cliff still stand out above the river, and Mary Ingles' route can still be followed - on all fours, of course. I climbed it, on a dry, moderate morning, fortified by a good night's rest in a sleeping bag and a breakfast of tinned beef, and the crossing took me three hours. That she crossed it on an icy day after six weeks of starvation and fatigue is marvelous." It is an amazing story, but the first couple of chapters are very graphic and I haven't been able to go back to the book. One rainy day I'll give it another try.

In addition to everything else offered at this park, there is a bison herd. There were several month-old calves with their mothers and a beautiful 1,800 pound male. The calves were soon to be auctioned to other locations, so we were lucky to see the cute little ones. We spent an enjoyable hour watching the bison and talking with one of the keepers.

If you're interested, here's a more in depth description of the park's history, read on:

The park is named for the huge cache of ice age animal bones found around the salt water creek that runs through the area. The region's surface bedrock started out about 450 million years ago as layers of bottom sediment in an ocean that covered Kentucky. Below the surface bedrock are sedimentary rock layers that were deposited earlier in oceans and tidal flats. One of the subsurface, salt-containing layers is the source of the sulfurous brine that rises through bedrock fractures to emerge in the Lick's springs. Evidence suggests major ice-ages have occurred during the earth's history about 7 times and humans arose during the latest of these global chills which began about 2 million years ago. Big Bone Lick was close to the southernmost edge of the ice during each one of the four major advances. Each of the advances was followed by a warmer interglacial period when ice melted and retreated to about present positions. The melt water from the glaciers formed large lakes along this glacial front and carved out the broad Ohio River floodplain. As the glaciers retreated northward the river valley became choked with a thick layer of alluvial sediment where extensive marshlands developed.

Fossils of oceanic organisms, including corals, clams, and snails have been found in the outcroppings of rocks in the hills surrounding Big Bone Lick. The minerals and the salt water creek that ran through the area drew all sorts of ice age creatures. Bones from mastodons, mammoths, ground sloth, ancient bison, enormous stag-moose, and primitive horses have been found here. Comparatively speaking, the mammal bones at the Lick are youngsters - they are from land animals that lived in the area a mere 20,000 years ago and about 400 million years after the disappearance of the sea from the region.

“The earliest Paleoindians (around 13,000 to 15,000 years BC) in the area not only sought mammoths and mastodons, but they also utilized the salt in the springs.

“Several American Indian nations knew of the partially exposed big bones on this valley floor before a French military party discovered the fossils in 1739. American and foreign museums have since acquired tens of thousands of fossil bones from this location.

“The Shawnee were exited from the region in the 1790's, but salt manufacturing at Big Bone continued until market competition caused the salt works to close in 1812. Around that time, the first of a series of inns opened near Big Bone Lick to welcome guests who bathed in and drank the sulfurous brine to cure their ills. The last inn closed in the early 1900's, partially due to the increased availability of bottled medicines for treating a variety of ailments.

“In October 1803, while traveling down the Ohio River to meet William Clark for their expedition to the Pacific, Meriwether Lewis visited Big Bone Lick. He was to gather fossillized bones for President Thomas Jefferson. In September of 1807, Clark supervised a three week dig for bones at Jefferson's request. Scientists consider William Clark's dig at Big Bone Lick in 1807 as establishing American vertebrate paleontology.

“Among the bones found at Big Bone Lick are those of at least eight species that became extinct around 10,000 years ago. The mastodon, Harlan's ground sloth, stag-moose, woodland musk ox, and ancient bison first became known to science on the basis of remains uncovered in this valley. The wooly and Columbian mammoths, complex-toothed horse, and Jefferson's ground sloths are also found here, but were initially identified at other North American fossil sites.

“In addition to the extinct animals, the Lick contains bones of moose, caribou, elk, American bison, and white-tailed deer. The deer is the only one of these living species that continues to roam the region and visit the lick.” Big Bone Lick State Park information.

Now it's off to Riffle Run Campground – an Army Corps of Engineers park.