As I said to being this series, I love mysteries. And Blue Licks is shaping up to be a fun one. We left off with travelers from across the world visiting Blue Lick Springs for the curative powers of the water. Sure, there was the occasional arson of one of the area hotels, but by and large, things were going well for the resort.

During the 1830’s the Springs were moderately successful. But, in the forties, the resort underwent a change which greatly affected business. “A three-story frame hotel was built, six hundred and seventy feet in length, with 1500 feet of large and airy galleries.” Included was a spacious dining room, together with a larger ballroom, and three elegantly furnished parlours. Since the Springs were located on the principal stagecoach mail route through Kentucky, they were easily accessible to vacationists and travelers. During the height of its watering season, from four to six hundred guests frequently registered at the fashionable resort.

During the cholera epidemic of 1849, great crowds of panic-stricken citizens fled the cities and towns and flocked to watering-places like Blue Licks. In 1851, a Mr. Talbutt boasted that Blue Licks was “one of the very few places that has entirely escaped the cholera in the last two years.”

Then the Springs suffered a number of reversals. On April 7, 1862, during the beginnings of the Civil War, the three-story hotel at Blue Lick Springs was destroyed by fire, the work of arsonists. On August 17, 1889, the Arlington Hotel burned. The old LaRue House, or Pavilion Hotel, was left, but the veins of the springs began to dry up in the fall of 1896.

The Blue Lick Springs Company, in an effort to find a new vein of mineral water, hired Thomas W. Hunter to search for the water. Hunter searched for the Springs during the dry autumn months, and on October 30, 1897, he made a discovery—although not the one he had expected.

At a depth of eight feet, Hunter made the same discovery that Daniel Drake and others had before him. He found the bones of buffalo, deer, and elk. But he also found the prehistoric bones of a mastodon. He found enough bones to fill up two farm wagons. Intrigued, but still determined to find the Blue Lick Spring water, Hunter dug on. And while he still did not find the missing mineral water, Hunter made a discovery that made headlines.

G.R. Keller, the publisher of the Carlisle Mercury, visited Blue Lick Springs to get a first-hand look at Hunter’s find:

“The editors and publisher of the Mercury went to Blue Licks last Sunday to see the bones of prehistoric animals recently unearthed by Thomas W. Hunter. The facts in regard to these bones are almost too much to believe, but as we have seen the curiosities with our own eyes we know the wonders are there. Mr. Hunter has dug evidence that there lived a race of men who had laid a stone walk to the springs after the same manner as the walks of this day are laid. The smooth worn rocks are there as proof of this. Several feet below where rested these prehistoric bones are sure evidence of the work of the hands of man.”

“Long before the white man sat foot on this historic ground, ‘there were others,’ and of these it is only for us to speculate. The stones were laid in perfect order and were worn as smooth as the old stone pavements of a city, showing plainly the work and use of man before the deposit of the bones of these huge animals. “

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Next Week: Blue Lick Springs-Digging Up Bones