Surveying during the largest underground Christmas lights show in the world
TAKING SURVEYING UNDERGROUND By Ben Shinabery
Louisville’s massive Mega Caverns presented challenges for a huge subterranean survey
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very day more than 150,000 people drive past the interstate billboards advertising the Louisville Mega Caverns not realizing they just drove over what is classified as the largest commercial building in Kentucky, even though it is entirely underground. What once was a massive subterranean limestone quarry in the heart of urban Louisville is now an environmentally conscious,
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high-security commercial storage facility that is so massive it contains the only fully underground aerial ropes challenge and zipline course in the world: The Louisville Mega Caverns.
HISTORY
For 42 years in the middle of the 20th century, the cavern was mined to provide crushed stone to the growing Louisville
metro area. With each blast and every truckload of stone removed, the underground cavern grew until the mining ended and the cavern covered 4 million square feet of space 75 to 100 feet below the surface. In 1989, private investors envisioned leasing climate-controlled storage between the 85- to 90-foot-tall rock pillars that were left to keep the mine from collapsing under the city. It is these structural pillars that classify the mine as a building. The Mega Caverns began development through special zoning and building permits, creating a business model for the largest recycling center in Kentucky while erecting walls between pillars for individual lease