Messenger-Inquirer from Owensboro, Kentucky • 32

1 8C STATE MESSENGER-INQUIRER, Sunday, February 9, 1986 Project to put a hole in the Gap gets under way Tunnel will ease 'chokepoint' at Cumberland -as i V1' By Bill Bergstrom Associated Press MIDDLESBORO Cumberland Gap, the only natural break in a mountain ridge extending from Georgia to Maine, has a rich history, reflected in its nicknames through the generations. Three hundred years ago the trail through the gap was a buffalo trace. Then a "Warrior's Path" for Indians of the region and later a "Wilderness Road" for settlers who followed the blazing of pioneers. Today, because of its deadly stretch of paved highway, the gap is sensationalized as "Massacre Mountain" or "Blood Mountain," depending on whether you read the newspapers in Kentucky or Tennessee. But now a new chapter in the gap's history is being written, with engineers and laborers in the initial stages of a $156 million project to tunnel beneath the ridge, to ease modern travel and turn back time in the gap itself to pioneer days when Daniel Boone cleared the Wilderness Road.

The steep, twisting three miles of U.S. 23 through Cumberland Gap National Historical Park will be covered with 300,000 cubic yards of rock dug out of the mountain to make the twin 36-foot-wide, 32-foot-high tunnels and returned to the rude wagon trail of the 1700s. By December 1992, four lanes of traffic are to sweep through corridors nearly a mile long and nearly 1,000 feet beneath the mountain separating Middlesboro and Cumberland Gap, Term. The project, according to plan, promises to boost local commerce, eliminating the last two-lane "choke-point" in the 100 miles of U.S. 25E between Interstate 75 at Corbin and 1-81 at Morristown, Tenn.

Since the 1960s, studies have recommended a tunnel to improve the road without further damage to the historic gap. After years of on-again, off-again battles over the appropriation in Congress and a five-month funding freeze by the executive branch last year, the pilot bore finally started in December. Some of the aura of the unknown from Boone's day remains. The gap's potentially dangerous geology, for example, calls for unusual precautions, including the use of spark-free equipment approved for mining in explosive atmospheres. So far the work consists of immense earthmoving efforts at the Associated Press Federal Highway Administration project engineer Bob Campbell says of building a four-lane highway tunnel under Cumberland Gap: "It's not wise from an engineering standpoint to start into the mountain with a 36-foot tunnel." 7 I ied and read everything I could about the project," he said.

The gap cuts through a ridge, or overthrust, created when the earth's crust cracked and one edge rode up over the other. The road, built in 1916 and reconstructed in the 1960s, averages 17,600 vehicles a day. Sixteen percent are trucks that crawl over the grade at an average of 16 mph. Deaths, inju ries and property damage in accidents are six times the national average. "The Claiborne (Tenn.) Progress calls it 'Blood The Middlesboro Daily News calls it- 'Massacre Normally we start thinking about four lanes at 10,000 vehicles a day," he said.

and to fight to the death. They're born with the killer instinct. No one needs to teach them. "The line tied to their legs is short enough -to keep each bird from getting to the other. But ifone of these roosters broke loose, he'd immediately start a fight with the nearest one.

And they wouldn't quit until one of them was dead." Cockfighting, in which two gamecocks or fighting roosters battle each other in a fight to the death, is illegal in the United States, Canada and many other countries. But there's nothing illegal about breeding, raising and selling gamecocks. Law enforcement authorities say organized cockfighting is not a problem in the area. In Boyd County, sheriffs deputy Everett Suttles said there's been some cockfighting in the past, but nothing "in a long while." Scott Bell said the breeding season Associated Press Loggers and heavy equipment clear the future torn the mouth of the projected Cumberland Gap tunnel. swatch of the four-lane U.S.

25E south into Tennessee The tunnel is scheduled for completion in 1 992. I CUSTOM DRAPERIESLTN Rooster farm a business of a different breed I 4 i vr Draperies Installation Experts" 926-8988 JA 30-50 OFF Discount applies to all lines, all styles, all colors and fabric and labor too! By G. Sam Piatt The Sunday Independent ASHLAND Scott Bell doesn't crow much about the business he and his father, Leon, operate on their small farm off Kentucky 3 in southern Boyd County. The business does the crowing for itself. About 150 game roosters, each tethered to his own A-frame shelter and staking claim to his little square of Mother Earth, strutted about, filling the morning air with their sounds.

Scott, 23, and his father are among several Boyd Countians who breed, raise and sell game chickens. The shiny, brightly colored fowl are shipped out of Tri-State Airport as orders come in from thousands of miles away. Most of them go to Hawaii, California and Guam, a territory of the United States located in the Mariana Island group. These chickens are nothing like the ones you buy in the supermarket for 70 cents a pound. These chickens sell tunnel approaches and a crew starting into the depths of the mountain, like scouts of old, with a 10-foot-square pilot bore.

"No tunnels are easy," said project engineer Bob Campbell, a veteran of 27 years with the Federal Highway Administration. On a recent tour of the site, Campbell's four-wheel-drive truck lurched as he maneuvered to avoid heavy machinery swarming over mountains of fill at the Kentucky and Tennessee ends of the projected tunnel. "This is ancient geology," he said. "It's not wise from an engineering standpoint to start into the mountain with a 36-foot tunnel." Campbell returned to the United States in 1983 after a two-year tour as one of 16 engineers sent to develop roads in Saudi Arabia. The tunnel was his next assignment.

"I've stud for more like $70 or $80 a pound. A rooster brings about $125, a rooster and two hens about $500. And they're too tough and stringy even to make dumplings over. The buyer also pays the air freight. The Bells advertise their birds in trade magazines that circulate internationally.

Scott Bell said game chickens are bought for breeding. They are raised mainly by fanciers, or people who keep chickens as a hobby. "This is more of a hobby than it is a business," he said. "My father's had gamecocks for 30 years, and that's what he says." Scott Bell said some of the game roosters that make their way to Guam and Hawaii no doubt are for something other than breeding stock or just a hobby. "These are battlecocks," he said.

"It's born and bred in them to fight Valentine Cards Candies Small Handcrafted Gifts Free Wrapping Delivery JULIANO $495 Compare to Giorglo's 683-4509 1700 Frederica Street Owensboro, Ky. Off Custom Draperies for his game chickens runs from January through June, while orders usually being arriving in February and continue off and on through May. The brood roosters are kept in wire cages unitl time to be placed in with a hen. The fertilized eggs are gathered and taken into the house. When about a dozen are collected, they are placed under a setting hen.

On the day they hatch, or soon thereafter, a steel punch is used to punch tiny holes through the web-like skin between the toes of each rooster. "It doesn't hurt them. But for the rest of his life, you can look at the rooster's feet and tell what species he is depending on which toes are marked, or how many marks there are," Bell said. The rock is under 150,000 pounds of pressure from the mountain above, he said. "If you make a hole, is it going to stay there or is it going to move? We don't know that until we get there." rn i it i it i i it i also.

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