KENTUCKY'S FIRST HIGHWAY TUNNEL

Modern road building has bypassed it in the same way that modern road have bypassed so many small towns in Kentucky, but Kentucky’s first highway tunnel is still there for the curious traveler or historian Boone Tunnel, immediately north of the Highway 68 bridge over the Kentucky River in Jessamine County was the first highway tunnel built in the state At the time of its completion, a motorist heading south would exit the tunnel and then cross directly over the Brooklyn Bridge into Mercer County. The state hired William Lutes to construct the road north from the Brooklyn Bridge, including the tunnel cut into the limestone and measured about onehundred fifty feet long, twenty feet tall, and twenty feel wide. The contract was awarded in the summer of 1923 and the tunnel was open by the summer of 1924 Lutes was originally from Beattyville but lived in Fayette County his whole adult life He built many roads throughout the state, including the seventeen mile long Cumberland Falls Highway in Whitley County in 1932 That was the first permanently improved road in the then-new Falls state park

Boone Tunnel would be used as part of Highway 68 for about thirty years until the Brooklyn Bridge collapsed while a truck was crossing it on November 30, 1953. When the replacement bridge was completed in December 1955, the tunnel was eliminated from the road.

BY: CENTRAL KENTUCKY HISTORIAN, JONATHAN SMITH