Sauerkraut Cave, Jefferson County, Kentucky

August 2024

Gate Types: 2 BASICS

This is another sad story with a happy ending. Sauerkraut Cave is a very historic cave, first used as a water source in the late 1700s. It was later used for food storage, as a natural root cellar. The area eventually opened as a state park in 1974, without a management plan for the cave. As a result, and due to the cave’s somewhat hidden location, it became a popular party spot. Now heavily graffitied, the USFWS had us gate it to protect the largest known population of the imperiled Louisville Cave Beetle, Pseudanophthalmus troglodytes. We built both gates as field exercises during a weeklong National Bat Gating Workshop. All photos © Jim Kennedy.

At the cave’s main entrance, historic wall remnants from the food-storage era are now heavily painted over by unauthorized visitors.
This particular note seems to sum up the lack of conservation values and/or education levels of those visitors .
When you don’t like the message of the Kentucky Cave Protection Act sign, you just cover it up, right?
USFWS biologist Karah, who organized the workshop, also got to try her hand at welding.
As usual, we start by laying down the expanded metal skirting, then plumb and weld the columns in place. Here, Jay is drilling a hole for an anchor pin.
Once the anchors are placed, the bars start going up rather quickly.
The brick walls hide most of the gate when viewed from the outside, but this lighted view from the inside shows the whole finished gate.
Meanwhile, we also completed the gate on the secondary entrance, protecting another historic wall.
Our tired but happy workshop participants at the end of the project.