While traveling through Kentucky I couldn’t resist visiting Big Bone Lick State Park. My wife and I joked together about how fun it would be to wear a t-shirt that simply said “Big Bone Lick” in large letters with “State Park” in small letters below it. As it turns out, the idea was not lost to the folks who design the gift shop merchandise and I got my t-shirt. I also learned a few things about the area, too.
The first thing I noticed was a sign about Lewis and Clark. Lewis and Clark had visited the area to collect specimens for President Jefferson on their expedition West. Apparently, Big Bone Lick was a famous site of thousands of fossilized bones of prehistoric mammals. The bones reportedly were scattered across the valley and visible or lying on the surface. So that is where the Big Bone part comes from; Big Bones of prehistoric mammals.
There is a paved path to walk with informational plaques. The informational plaques are interesting and tell you about the history of the area, but the locations of the plaques is unclear as to the purpose. The plaque is positioned as if you were supposed to read it and then look past it as something relevant to the words on the plaque. In a couple places we had no idea what we were supposed to see that was related to what we just read.
Apparently the water in the area was/is salty and full of minerals. The animals came here to drink up the yummy water. Apparently this is the lick.
The Native Americans used to extract salt from the water. Later the water was boiled away in wood fired salt furnaces to extract the salt commercially. The area also enjoyed a period of time as a famous health resort where people would bathe in and drink the sulfurous water for it’s purported healing qualities. Very little of the marshy quagmire and treacherous wet earth exists today.
The little stagnant looking stream is milky white; presumably from the mineral content. But the stream is difficult to imagine supporting a industry of salt furnaces turning out 60 bushels of salt per day.
The park has some unexpected inhabitants: a herd of bison are kept in the park. When we were there, the bison had been moved from a smaller fenced area to a larger one because they had trampled the pasture so much. It was easy to see them anyway.
The Bison were lying in the shade of the trees. As we approached, the herd started moving out of the shade into the open field. Just on the other side of the trees was a paddock for rounding them up. The background settings was terrible, but the visibility was great. The bull was the proud papa of 4 little brown baby bison.
The big bull bison just lumbered around the females sniffing and showing flehmen behavior. In retrospect I should have taken of photo of him in the flehmen pose. Drat!
The National Park Service has an interesting page with more information about Big Bone Lick State Park.
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