Mega Cavern

The Mega Cavern is former limestone mine in Louisville, Kentucky. The cave stretches under parts of the Watterson Expressway and the Louisville Zoo. Due to its support structures, it is classified as a building and is the largest building in Kentucky. The cavern is used for business, storage, recycling, and tourism, with offerings including tram-guided tours, zipline tours, a ropes course, a mountain bike park, and an annual holiday lights display.

Description

The Mega Cavern is 4,000,000 square feet (370,000 m²). structure located in Louisville, Kentucky with an entrance at 1841 Taylor Ave. About 75–100 feet (23–30 m) underground, the cave stretches under parts of the Watterson Expressway and the Louisville Zoo. Due its support structures, it is classified as a building and is the largest building in Kentucky.

History and use

Limestone mine

The cavern started out as a mine and limestone quarry. During the Cold War, the cavern was to be used as a fallout shelter. Mining ceased in the 1970s.

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville (generally pronounced ⁱ/ˈluːəvəl/ or ⁱ/ˈlʌvəl/ by natives, and ⁱ/ˈluːiːvɪl/ by others) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 30th-most populous city in the United States. It is one of two cities in Kentucky designated as first-class, with the other being the state's second-largest city of Lexington. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County.

Louisville was founded in 1778 by George Rogers Clark and is named after King Louis XVI of France, making Louisville one of the oldest cities west of the Appalachian Mountains. Sited beside the Falls of the Ohio, the only major obstruction to river traffic between the upper Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico, the settlement first grew as a portage site. It was the founding city of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which grew into a 6,000-mile (9,700 km) system across 13 states. Today, the city is known as the home of the Kentucky Derby, Kentucky Fried Chicken, the University of Louisville and its Louisville Cardinals athletic teams, Louisville Slugger baseball bats, and three of Kentucky's six Fortune 500 companies. Its main airport is also the site of UPS's worldwide air hub.

Mega

Mega or MEGA may refer to:

Science

Business

Magazine

Music

Radio

People

Cave

A cave or cavern is a hollow place in the ground, especially a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. Caves form naturally by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. The word cave can also refer to much smaller openings such as sea caves, rock shelters, and grottos.

Speleology is the science of exploration and study of all aspects of caves and the cave environment. Visiting or exploring caves for recreation may be called caving, potholing, or spelunking.

Types and formation

The formation and development of caves is known as speleogenesis. Caves are formed by various geologic processes and can be variable sizes. These may involve a combination of chemical processes, erosion from water, tectonic forces, microorganisms, pressure, and atmospheric influences.

It is estimated that the maximum depth of a cave cannot be more than 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) due to the pressure of overlying rocks. For karst caves the maximum depth is determined on the basis of the lower limit of karst forming processes, coinciding with the base of the soluble carbonate rocks.