What Does a Newer Rock City Barn Look Like?

he Current Rock City barn painters repaint dozens of the older barns, yet also find newer barns to paint for the first time. Right now they maintain just fewer than 100 different barns. This one, pictured below, was painted for the first time within the last 10 years.

SEE 7 STATES from
ROCK CITY
Atop LOOKOUT MTN. Chattanooga Tenn.

231.5 Mi Via

Gravel Switch, KY

There are a couple of clues to distinguish this from some of the older repainted "Clark Byers" barns. First, you can tell by the painted "font", which you can really just get by comparing this to other barns. Second clue is the location. It used to be that all of the barns appeared on major highways, but the location of this barn is at the entrance of Maker's Mark Distillery, which is instead a tourist destination of its own.

The Maker's Mark people built their gristmill distillery in 1805, and is the oldest operating distillery still operational in the U.S. Located on their property include the original master distiller's house, an old toll house, a springhouse, an old fire engine house and a barrel warehouse. All of this is located in Loretto, Ky in Marion county.

This barn is too new to be included in the Jenkins Book.
On OhioBarns.com, it is designated as RCB 17-75-01.
In the Simmonds Book on Page 78.
In Some places, the background paint appears to me to have a greenish tint, but in person, at least when I visited was definitely black.
See its location on a map Here.
LAT 37.6475 / LON -85.3503

EDIT on 1/04/07
Here are two alternate views:
Lyle Canterbury has a view of this barn on his excellent website CountyRoadsPhoto.com. See it HERE.
Mark Abercrombie has also used spectacular effect on his photo of this barn which you can see HERE.

Wonder Cave barn

This is a fading memory for a couple of reasons. First, the paint has worn off so much that you very easily could miss the sign. You might look at the photo and still not see it. Second, The tourist attraction advertised here went out of business about 20 years ago.



You'll have a tough time determining what this says, but I caught a glimpse of the word Wonder, did a U-turn in the street and went back to take another look. On rock city barns, a popular slogan is "World's 8th Wonder" and maybe that's why I even saw the word Wonder.

This is instead an old ad for Wonder Cave, which was at the base of the drive up Monteagle in Grundy County on Highway US 41 in a small town called Pelham. This metal barn is approx. 6 miles north of that. The cave was discovered in 1897 by a trio of Vandy students. It was used by moonshiners for a while. In 1900, it opened as a tourist destination when visitor boarded a flat bottom boat, which lasted until 1917. A few years later, an inn, which is now a bed and breakfast opened. With the opening of the interstate diverting traffic off highway 41, the cave has closed and opened to visitors several times.

If you are so inclined to try and find it on your own, see it on a map HERE.
Lat & Lon: 35.35894 N / 85.938374 W