June 25, 2010

June 25, 2010

The Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers flow into the Ohio within a few miles of each other. Both have been dammed up near their mouth forming long parallel lakes. The thin strip of land between them was bought up by the government and turned into the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. From Fort Donelson we drove north thru the LBL. It is mostly wooded with a few meadows on which buffalo and elk graze. Near the middle we stop at a Forest Service wildlife rehab center. It is more of a nature center and local zoo with owls, eagles, wolves, bobcats and a lot of bird feeders and flowerbeds. A nice break for an hour.

At the other end of the parking lot are the remains of an antebellum iron furnace. Apparently the whole area is dotted with them because the region is rich in the three necessary ingredients: iron ore, limestone and lots of timber. We walk a short interpretative trail to see how this operation worked. It is amazing how much manpower was required to run these tiny furnaces in those early industrial times. Every day it needed 165 wheelbarrows of ore and limestone and one acre of wood. After reading this I am thinking back to our Civil War battlefield tours and wondering how either side could have made enough iron to supply all the cannon balls both sides were tossing at each other.

We emerge out of the LBL in Kentucky where we head east and spend the night outside Mammoth Cave National Park.