The Red River Gorge Geological Area, Daniel Boone National Forest, Kentucky                  

Please remember that camping and firebuilding in rockshelters is prohibited. The USFS office in Stanton is now closed. The Gladie Cultural-Environmental Learning Center has replaced it as the new public contact location.

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The Red River Gorge Today

The Red River Gorge is a unique area of the Daniel Boone National Forest that is designated as a National Natural Landmark. Located in eastern-central Kentucky, within the sandstone belt of the Pottsville Escarpment, this area has been beautifully sculpted by millions of years of wind and water erosion.

Today, the Red River Gorge is a popular place for hiking, exploring, camping, and climbing. Yet despite the popularity, you can easily find yourself in the solitude of nature, given 29,000 acres of spectacular cliffs, rock shelters, waterfalls, caves, swimming holes, and over 100 natural arches.

The Gladie Cultural-Environmental Learning Center , located at the Gladie Historic Site on KY 715, provides Red River Gorge information, maps, and educational opportunities.

Please read the seven most important things that the Backcountry Rangers want you to know before you visit the Red River Gorge!

RRGtoday's Featured Article Featured Article Featured Article Featured Article

Living Archaeology Weekend 2008  "Bringing the past to life"
by Jim Stickley, post date Aug. 20, 2008

The Living Archaeology Weekend started in a small rockshelter in 1989 along Tunnel Ridge Road in the Red River Gorge. This first event was sponsored by the Kentucky Heritage Council as part of a series designed to inform the public about archaeology in our state by "bringing the past to life."

Today, seventeen other sponsors have joined the Kentucky Heritage Council in continuing this popular event.

This year's event will be set up along the banks of the Red River. Various stations under tent canopies will be spaced away from each other along the river.

Johnny Faulkner, the USFS archaeologist in charge of the event, says the main emphasis will be on the prehistory cultures of the Red River Gorge and surrounding areas of Kentucky, with "regional applications of stone-age technologies that extended throughout the southeast United States." Paleo, Archaic, Woodland, and Ft Ancient cultures will be represented.

Living Archaeology Weekend, Red River Gorge, Kentucky
Photo courtesy of the Living Archaeology Weekend.
There also will be tribal representatives from both the Cherokee and Shawnee tribes from Oklahoma to demonstrate crafts such as Cherokee basket weaving, Shawnee clothing worn through time, and Cherokee story tellers.

If your walk back in time down the Red is not enough, there will also be demonstration areas near the historic Gladie cabin that will cover early corn processing technologies, such as grinding corn with a stone slab, and an area with long hunters using tools like the ones that were used during the contact period in Kentucky during the 1700's.

The two day event will be held on Friday, September 19, for school groups by prior arrangement only, and on Saturday, September 20, for the general public. Saturday hours are from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. There will not be any food vendors at the event, so plan on packing a picnic lunch if you go.

Faulkner has this to say about Saturday's program:

"The Saturday program is more directed to adults, for a wide range of local resident and academia minded teacher and student, and both professional and non professional archaeologists. Most of the demonstrators at the event are highly skilled and offer a rich body of knowledge pertaining to how primitive technologies operated during the span of the prehistoric periods.

"It's a rare opportunity to have the chance to see many of the primitive skills taught by demonstrators that have been practicing these skills many years. For example: To take a chunk of flint rock and chip it into a refined spear or arrow, or to turn a lump of clay into a cooking vessel, both primitive skills takes many years to master.

"In addition there will be educational stations that will present a refined chronology of the prehistory in the area, and staff to answer questions."

Many other skills and technologies will be demonstrated, including fire building, Native medicine and cooking, bow/arrow making, and hide tanning.

Directions

Take I-64 to exit 98 (Bert T. Combs Mountain Parkway); take the parkway to exit 33 (Slade exit); then turn left at the junction of KY 11/15. Go 1.5 miles west on KY 15 to KY 77, and follow the signs.

For more information contact:

Daniel Boone National Forest
1700 Bypass Road
Winchester, KY 40391
859-745-3100

Website: http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/boone/heritage/livingarch.shtml



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