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Environmental Achievements
Pound Gap Thrust Fault
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AASHTO Center for Environmetal Excellence |
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Archaeology |
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Armstrong
Farmstead (Fayette County KYTC District 7) |
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Cedar Tree Harvesting |
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Cemetery
Road ( Warren County KYTC District 3) |
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Clean
Stormwater Everyones Business |
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Duck Boxes for Wetland Projects |
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Energy Resources Management Plan |
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Eggert's Sunflower Reintroduction |
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Jenkins
Pound Gap (Letcher County US23 KYTC District 12) |
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Kentucky Transportation Cabinets Environmental Policy |
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Hal
Rogers (Daniel Boone)Parkway (Laurel, Clay, Leslie and Perry Counties) |
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McConnell's
Farmstead (Bourbon County US27/68 Upgrade KYTC District 7) |
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Paris
Pike (Bourbon County KYTC District 7) |
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Paris Pike Awards List |
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Pine
Mountain ( KYTC District 12) |
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Three
Springs Road Images (KY 884 KYTC District 3) |
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Saving
old bridge pier hleps protect mussel habitat Federal Highway Administration site |
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US
460 ( Pike County KYTC District 12) |
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Waste Tire Amnesty Program |
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Pound Gap is an opening in Pine Mountain, a long linear mountain that runs north and south for almost 125 miles along the Kentucky and Virginia border. Pine Mountain spans three Kentucky counties: Bell, Harlan, and Letcher. For a distance of nearly 90 miles no stream cuts through the mountain, and there are no natural crossing points, making it an effective barrier to migration and transportation.
People had to get over this mountain and would do that at the easiest spot to cross. A fault bisects the mountain at Pound Gap, and weathering and erosion have created a “hole in the ridge”. This opening made it easier to cross the mountain there. It is this “hole in the ridge” that provided the Transportation Cabinet with our beginning to better roads in this area. During construction of the new section of US 23, a wonder of nature was exposed. This wonder is known as the Pine Mountain Pound Gap Thrust Fault. A Thrust Fault is a tear in the upper part of the Earth’s crust along which one block of strata is pushed up and over another block of strata. The collision of the North American continent with Africa and Europe more than 275 million years ago formed the Appalachian Mountains and the thrust fault at Pound Gap.
The exposed strata that we see today would normally appear about 2000 feet below the surface of the earth.
The construction of US 23 in Letcher County has given students, geologists, residents and tourists the opportunity to study the unique history and formation of the Appalachian Mountains and the thrust fault that could not have been seen otherwise.
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