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You are looking for a pill bottle. There is a pull off close by.
If you are interested in little local history please read on. (This is an abandoned railroad that FJ40thom might be interested in for his series of caches.)
Kentucky Union Railroad
The first railroad to come to Wolfe County was the one built by the Kentucky Union Railroad Company in the late 1880's. Speculators, as early as the 1850's, wanted to build a railway to connect Lexington to the coal deposits of West Virginia. The project would not begin until 1886, when track was laid to Clay City in Powell County. The building of the line pushed eastward through present-day Natural Bridge State Park, where a tunnel was built. From here, the rail was built along the Graining Block Fork to the small community of Torrent in Wolfe County.
The dream of building the railway to West Virginia was given up, and it was decided to build to Jackson in Breathitt County. From this vantage point, the Eastern Kentucky coal could be accessed by the industries of Lexington. At Torrent, the rail builders turned away from the Graining Block Fork towards the Kentucky River. In order to proceed from Torrent, a tunnel had to be built through a hill that stood in the way.
According to local tradition, the tunnel was built solely by convict labor. Digging through the soft shale was risky business and, as the story goes, several of the more disobedient prisoners fell victim to rock slides either by convience or through consequence. Enough of the men died to warrant a graveyard on a nearby hill. The completed tunnel spanned 11, 100 feet in length and was the longest one on the entire line. From the Torrent tunnel, the rail was built down Walker's Creek to the North Fork of the Kentucky River and then on to Jackson.
Financial problems overwhelmed the Kentucky Union Railroad, and it was reorganized as the Lexington and Eastern Railroad (L&E) in 1894. A few years later, the L. Park Hotel was opened along the rail tracks at Torrent and showed promise as a resort hotel. Since no roads existed at the time, the railroad was the only means of visiting the Torrent area. The L & E Railroad took notice and promoted Torrent in order to attract tourists to ride their rail. Natural Bridge, at the time, did not have a hotel and visitors lodged at the L. Park Hotel at Torrent. Morning excursion trains took the tourists from Torrent to Natural Bridge and another brought them back in the evening. It proved to be a profitable enterprise for the Lexington and Eastern Railroad.
The Louisville and Nashville Railroad purchased the line in 1910. In 1926, the company sold its land in the area of Natural Bridge to the state, who made it into a state park. A good automobile road was built to the park, which prompted a decline in the railroad traffic. The L & N Railroad operated the line until its closure in 1942, when its tracks were taken up and melted into weaponry to fight the Germans and Japanese in World War II.
Several landmarks remain today to remind us of this railroad. The tunnel at Natural Bridge exists intact, but only the entrances of the Torrent tunnel remain. Since Highway 11 was built almost entirely on top of the railroad line, most of the evidence was destroyed. At few points along the highway, you can still see sections of the old railroad embankment and even more can be seen along Walker's Creek.
Here is an article from a local paper that describes what this place used to be. This may repeat some of the above info.
Tourism And Business Once
Boomed Along The L&E Railroad
The Natural Beauty Was Spectacular, Drawing Tourists To What Was Known To Be One Of The Healthiest Places On The Planet
By Bob Smith - 2006
Tourism has long been an economical factor in the Eastern Coal Field section of Kentucky. Even before the turn of the 20th century, promoters were proclaiming this area as one of the healthiest places on the planet to be. Evidence of that philosophy was the resort hotels built for the tourism trade.
The L. Park Hotel at Torrent took great advantage of the considerable tourism trade that frequented the L&E Railroad Park at Natural Bridge, three miles from the hotel. Excursion trains brought carloads of tourists from Cincinnati, Dayton, Lexington, and Louisville to enjoy the wild natural beauty and the geological wonders that made up the Natural Bridge Park. Many came and went the same day, but those who stayed overnight had the choice of camping in the park or spending the night at the L. Park Resort Hotel. Park guests frequently chose to travel on to Beattyville where they could spend the night at the luxurious Nina Webb Inn, also billed as a health resort hotel. The L&E did not go to Beattyville but junctioned with the Beattyville and Cumberland Gap Railroad at Maloney.
Some park visitors stayed several days to enjoy the scenery and delighted in the side excursions to local communities. The Mountain Central Railway intersected the L&E at Campton Junction (the end of the Natural Bridge tunnel where the sky lift is currently located). From there, the little narrow gage railroad made its way to Campton, the county seat of Wolfe County. The train made it up the steep grade with the assistance of a switchback track system. Still, the incline was dramatic and the scenery was spectacular. At one point in the journey, travelers could look across the cliffs and valley and directly through the Natural Bridge arch itself. Hick Patrick, a former Lee County schoolteacher, once remarked that no roller coaster in the country had a thing on the Mountain Central Railroad when it came to thrills. Mr. Patrick attended the Alvan Drew School, boarding institution located at Pine Ridge, along the train route to Campton, and he was a frequent traveler on the railroad.
The late 1800s and early 1900s were a busy time along the L&E (Lexington and Eastern) route which stretched from Winchester to Jackson. The tracks passed through Clay City, Stanton, Natural Bridge, Torrent, Fincastle, St. Helens, Tallega, Athol, and Elkatawa. The photo above shows a L&N Bridge. Kentucky rail mileage reached its maximum by 1930. Over 40 companies operated 5,005 miles of line, scheduling hundreds of passenger trains.
Visitors to Campton could find overnight accommodations there or take a short six-mile buggy ride to Hazel Green to find lodging at the Rittenhouse Hotel at the famous Swango Springs Resort. The mineral water from Swango Springs was advertised as "good for most anything that ails you."
The late 1800s and early 1900s were a busy time along the L&E (Lexington and Eastern) route which stretched from Winchester to Jackson. The tracks passed through Clay City, Stanton, Natural Bridge (also known as McCormick's), Torrent, Fincastle, St. Helens, Tallega, Athol, and Elkatawa. The rail line was completed to Natural Bridge and Torrent around 1889 and Jackson in the 1890s. The L&E sold out to the L&N (Louisville and Nashville) about 1911 and the tracks were completed to McRoberts in Letcher County to open the coal fields of southeastern Kentucky in 1915. In 1917 the Lee County "Oil Boom" opened the largest oil fields east of the Mississippi River.
Lumber was "king" along the L&E, and later the L&N, from around 1890 until the oil boom began. It was the Dana Lumber Company that built the Nada Tunnel and the railroad that opened the Red River Gorge country. The Mountain Central Railroad also began as a lumber carrier, but became a common carrier in 1906. Between Natural Bridge and Torrent the Red River and Beattyville Southern Railroad connected the L&E with the lumber boom town of Ridgewood. Between Torrent and Fincastle the Eastintown rail line junctioned with the L&E on Walker's Creek. It too hauled lumber and logs. The narrow gage line came from the Wolfe County community of Eastintown on Devil's Creek. Numerous tramlines intersected the L&E along its route. The logs were loaded on small carts that ran on narrow tracks and carts were pulled by mules or oxen.
The town of Clay City grew up around the Red River Iron Works, but the community was quick to take advantage of the lumber boom and the railroad. Several mills were built to produce lumber and staves. Sawmills, planing mills, and flooring mills sprang up all along the L&E's route. Communities too small for a railroad depot had whistle stops where trains stopped to pick up logs and lumber products that were in great demand in Lexington, Louisville, and cities all over the east.
The tourists still came to see Natural Bridge and the scenic waterfalls at Torrent and Fincastle, but investors came as well, especially when the oil fields opened. John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegy, and other wealthy industrialists spent the nights at the L. Park Hotel and Nina Webb Inn. Their boots tread the boardwalks at Fincastle and the muddy streets of Torrent, and they visited oil wells at Fixer, Little Singing, Soreheel Hollow, and Bald Rock. As the oil boom grew, the rich and famous came from New York and Hollywood. Some came to invest, but others came out of curiosity and enjoyed the natural scenery, along with the various aspects of mountain culture, whether it was the gristmill of Tom Johnson on Walkers Creek, the salt peter works under the cliffs that made gunpowder, or the "blind tiger" saloon sitting at the mouth of some hollow.
A nitroglycerin manufacturing facility was established by the railroad on Walker's Creek and the first bottled gas in the world was manufactured by the Cumberland Gas Plant at Fincastle in the 1920s and shipped out on L&N rail cars. Fincastle was a popular stop for vacationers and campers coming to Natural Bridge and Torrent. Numerous creeks, waterfalls, caves, rock shelters, and springs were within easy walking distance of the railroad depot and the waters of Walker's Creek were teeming with fish for those who brought along their fishing rods. Nature lovers enjoyed an extra bonus provided by the spectacular array of local wildflower colors. Botanical surveys by the University of Kentucky announced that more species of wildflowers existed within a 25-mile radius of Beattyville than anywhere in the world.
Those special days along the L&E were not to last, however. The world was changing too quickly. The lumber business played out about the time WWI came along. The coming of roads and highways would pull traffic away from the railroad. The Depression came along and the L. Park Hotel burned down in 1929. As tourism lagged the L&N built a lodge at Natural Bridge in 1923, but turned the park over to the state in 1927. The opening of the Yellow Rock tunnel by the L&A (Louisville and Atlanta) in 1902 between Beattyville and Irvine opened a simpler, more economical route to transport coal from southeastern Kentucky and the old L&E route was doomed. WWII came and the route was abandoned. In 1942 the tracks were taken up and the steel donated the to war effort.
Bob Smith, Editor-Publisher of The Three Forks Tradition newspaper.
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