Into the Eye of the Dragon: Nada Tunnel’s Timeless Tale
In Kentucky's Red River Gorge, a historic tunnel stands as a testament to the region’s boom-and-bust cycles. Amelia Loeffler explores how this “Gateway to the Red” reflects the area's complex past and uncertain future.
If you stand at the mouth of the Nada Tunnel in Powell County, Kentucky, you can see clear through to the other side, where the tunnel’s arched opening glows with the yellow haze of daylight like a celestial gate.
Some have seen this beckoning light at the end of Nada’s craggy underground pass and called it “The Eye of the Dragon.” The tunnel is short enough and straight enough you can always see your way out. But as you drive through the steep mountainside of Martin’s Fork and Auxier Ridge, into Snakey Holler, the tunnel’s insides seem to tighten like a prehistoric serpent’s coil, or a cyclops’ muscled fist, as if the mountain is trying to eat you alive.
Miners call a hillside tunnel’s entrance a portal. They know that to cross the threshold is to enter an underbelly where millions of years of Earthly history press down into themselves, yielding seams of coal and iron ore. Pass through the Nada portal (pronounced NAY-duh), and you’ll move through eons, see the passage of time in layers of sediment and tiny fossils embedded in the limestone.
Three-hundred-million years ago, long before there was Kentucky or Powell County or Snakey Holler or Martin’s Fork, there was a river delta that spilled into a shallow sea. Paleozoic sediment deposits, carried on southbound currents, consolidated over millions of years at the river’s mouth into quartzose sandstone.
Eastern Kentucky’s hills were born of colossal convergence during the Cretaceous Period, which lasted 77 million years and ended 66 million years ago. Tectonic plates under the Earth’s crust rose and fell over those millions of years, warping the age-old sediment and forcing it skyward. This sandstone became the mountains, humbled by time and erosion into slopes that ascend with humility, unassuming but grand. The terrestrial upheaval created vertical fractures in the sandstone, and these became cliff lines. Ancient rivers beat against newly exposed rock like a pulse, carving cliffs and dissecting the landscape into valleys and winding ridges. These became the hollers, their forested slopes and open mouths. This all became the Red River Gorge, ridges and cliffs and overhangs.
Once rooted, kudzu can grow a mile a day. In the dark, the veiny vines that drip from the entrance of the tunnel look like stalactites, maybe even teeth.
At night, everything is still except for the kudzu. It grows along the side of the road, coiling at the Nada Tunnel's mouth. The creeping, invasive vine is one of the most ecologically threatening species in the region. Kudzu kills other plants, girdling hundred-year-old tree trunks, weighing branches and stems to their breaking points, and smothering undergrowth with a thick blanket of leaves. Once rooted, kudzu can grow a mile a day. In the dark, the veiny vines that drip from the entrance of the tunnel look like stalactites, maybe even teeth.
At the turn of the twentieth century, much of Eastern Kentucky was already years deep into its golden age of coal mining. Kentucky’s Eastern Coalfields reach 30 counties, stretching into Powell at its westernmost escarpment. In 1900, Floyd County became home to the Eastern Coalfields’ first commercial mine. Throughout the early 1900s, the coal-mining industry boomed in Appalachia, fueled by the need for bituminous coal to power the age of invention, the railroad’s western expansion, World War I. But while neighboring counties—Lee, Breathitt, etc.— experienced a steady incline in mining related industry, Powell was left largely untouched because of its lesser coal reserves.
What Powell County lacked in coal it made up for in lumber. Oak and sycamore, beech and ash, poplar, walnut, and basswood canopied the virgin forests of the Red River Gorge with such verve that one could stand in the woods at high noon and swear it was twilight, so little sun shone through the dense tree cover.
In 1910, Ernest Simmons, a primary stakeholder of West Virginia’s Dana Lumber Company, traveled to Powell County to survey the land. Simmons saw the untapped fortune that lay dormant in the woods and, with his business partner, John Flint, bought 2,583 acres, upon which he established a small logging town. In a thinly veiled conceit, Simmons anagrammed the company name and called the town Nada.
The tunnel left barely an index finger’s width of space between train tops and mountain bottom, and as timber was hauled out of the holler, wind whistled through the tiny gap, echoing in the emptiness left behind.
Not long after the last house was roofed, the last moonshine still was built, and the last working man arrived with wife and children in tow, the railroad slunk into Powell County. While previous logging operations had transported lumber by water, floating logs down the Red River, Simmons and Flint had a bigger vision. The Dana Lumber Company commissioned construction of the area’s first and only standard-gauge railway in order to connect their lumber holdings to distant markets. The new rail would connect to the nearest junction with the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, which was already instrumental in hauling coal from Eastern Kentucky and would make Powell county’s vast lumber holdings accessible to buyers outside the state. The railroad unrolled, rail by rail, through the mountains, low to the ground and underfoot like a shadow, winding and twisting like a vine, finding the path of least resistance, scything through the foothills. The forests were rich with hardwoods. Poplar, red oak, and black walnut, once felled and split, had to be milled. The mills, miles away in Clay City, Beattyville, and Frankfort, became reachable by rail, and thus began the timber boom.
But the mountain ridge at Martin’s Fork proved an impasse. Where the woods had been malleable, the rock was unimpressed by iron. Bringing the railroad to Nada, then bringing wood from the hollers to market, would require a tunnel. Two teams of men worked for nearly a year, drilling from either side of the ridge, but the mountain’s resistance rendered manpower futile.
Ultimately, the Nada tunnel was hollowed into the limestone with dynamite, in the fashion of explosives used in the rock and pillar coal mines counties away. The project was finished in 1911. Twelve feet high, thirteen feet wide, and nine hundred feet long, the tunnel left barely an index finger’s width of space between train tops and mountain bottom, and as timber was hauled out of the holler, wind whistled through the tiny gap, echoing in the emptiness left behind.
During the bitterly cold winter of the tunnel’s creation, one of the hired workmen set a stick of frozen dynamite too near his fire. As the flames warmed his numb toes and lulled him into a fitful sleep, the tunnel sighed a breath of cool, windy air, leading a lick of flame to the dynamite’s fuse. The man blew to bits a few hundred feet from the newly chiseled Nada tunnel. Pieces of his body fell near its mouth. Bloody viscera landed inside. Folklore says his final breath echoes in the tunnel still, his inhale and exhale reverberating in perpetuity.
The Dana Lumber Company slashed and burned through the Red River Gorge at a rate of thirty thousand board-feet of lumber per day. Counties away, the coal production in Eastern Kentucky increased twentyfold in a mere twenty years. The two industries, lumber and coal, both as extractive and ecologically devastating as they were profitable, were twisted together like a double helix, tied to each other like the parallel rails of a train track.
When, in 1925, the timber holdings were exhausted, Dana Lumber left, pulling up the railroad tracks as they went, leaving in their wake barren land, sinking gullies, and the tunnel: a jagged scar carved into the ridge’s stone face. Similarly, the 1920s began the coal industry’s first downturn as coal prices decreased, miners unionized, and the beginning of the Great Depression seized the country. By 1942, the railway through the Nada Tunnel had been entirely dismantled. Some of its rails made their way to the War Production Board as donated iron for artillery. The railroad tunnel was converted to a one-lane road for automobile traffic.
He died upon impact, but maybe he saw the golden glow coming from the end of the tunnel, the yellow of daylight on the other side, that celestial gate.
Decades after the trains stopped running and the tracks were paved over, a motorcyclist swerved into the stone. He died upon impact, but maybe in the last moments before he collided with the mountain’s insides, he saw the golden glow coming from the end of the tunnel, the yellow of daylight on the other side, that celestial gate.
The tunnel, still twelve feet high and thirteen feet wide, has changed little since the 1940s. What has changed is the tunnel’s traffic. Once a byway for wood hauled from the Gorge to mills in cities miles away, Nada has become a waypoint for hikers, campers, rock climbers, and tourists. The Red River Gorge Scenic Byway is a forty-five-mile drive along KY-11 that winds through the gorge, guiding visitors past hiking trails, ridges, vistas, and over a hundred natural stone arches. By design, the Scenic Byway passes through the Nada Tunnel. The tunnel’s eerie darkness cultivates a sense of mystery and allure, a tourist attraction of sorts.
The Eastern Kentucky Coalfields are characterized by sinuous ridges underlain with shale, sandstone, and coal. The erosion of exposed rock throughout the region created knife-sharp pinnacles, hollowed eaves and natural arches, the very features that have made the Red River Gorge so famous among rock climbers and outdoors enthusiasts. Scholars of rural gentrification call features like these “natural amenities” and discuss how rural areas with high rates of wealth inequality are often targets of capital investment by investors looking to profit from tourism centered on these natural features.
In attempts to revitalize rural economies devastated by the decline of extractive industries such as lumber and coal, the Kentucky Department of Tourism provided cities with a guide to capitalize on these natural amenities, encouraging rural counties to market hiking trails, vistas, rock climbing destinations, treehouse “glamping,” etc. The rich forests that once attracted profiteers for timber now are recognized for the dividends they can provide as development: rental cabins, campgrounds, Airbnbs.
As tourists flood into the Red River Gorge, they unknowingly bait developers eager to build resorts, rental properties, golf courses, and convention centers. Steadily increasing property taxes have slinked in not too far behind.
As tourists flood into the Red River Gorge, they unknowingly bait developers eager to build resorts, rental properties, golf courses, and convention centers. Steadily increasing property taxes have slinked in not too far behind. Higher rates of wage inequality now wind through the surrounding towns, squeezing families to their breaking point, pricing them out of the communities they have called home for generations. In Powell County, median home prices increased 58.37 percent from 2000 to 2020, and median rent skyrocketed from around $550 to nearly $700 a month. Arguments in favor of rural development catered to natural amenities say that tourism can create positive economic impacts and generate employment opportunities. However, data show that despite increases in tourist spending in Eastern Kentucky, employment in the tourism industry has not increased proportionally. Adding further insult to injury, jobs in the hospitality and service industry are notoriously low-wage and seasonally unreliable.
While Powell County Airbnb properties alone generated over $5 million in revenue in 2021, that money does not necessarily circulate back into the local community. In fact, a large percentage of profit generated by rental properties in the Red River Gorge goes to out-of-county (or out-of-state) developers. The increase in development without adequate increases in local revenue poses unique challenges for public services such as trash collection, sewer-line installation in remote areas, and road maintenance to keep up with increased traffic flow.
Over one million people visit the Red each year, drawn to its towering overhangs and quarter-mile-high limestone cliffs. Much like the mountain ridge resisted the extraction of lumber holdings from the hollers of Powell County, the Nada Tunnel resists the co-opting of the Red River Gorge’s natural beauty; the principal point of entrance to the Red is Kentucky Route 77, which bottlenecks at the Nada tunnel’s narrowing. The tunnel sees such volume of tourist traffic each year that travel websites and blogs have dubbed it “The Gateway to the Red River Gorge.” Cars must pass through the tunnel one at a time, their drivers’ careful attention turned to the gradually growing arch of light at the other end. Inevitably, this leads to traffic congestion. Ever longer lines of travelers wait their turn to pass through, to hear the whispers and moans of the ghosts within, to look into the eye of the dragon and exit unscathed.
In the early 21st century, a climber tried to scale the exposed face of the rock above the tunnel’s entrance. He fell to his death. His body landed at the bottom of the cliff, mangled among the kudzu. Maybe his grip was weak, maybe his footing slipped. Probably the kudzu grew up and around his ankles and pulled him to his death, swaddled then strangled him and cocooned the body while it decomposed.
Drive through the Nada Tunnel, through the ominous dark toward the daylight at the other side, and you’ll pass through the interconnected history of coal, lumber, and real-estate development in Powell County; the past is omnipresent. If you listen, you can hear the ghosts: the low moan of a man who exploded, the ringing crash of motorcycle into stone, the shriek of the man who fell, the slow crack of tree bark suffocating in a kudzu straightjacket, a dull groan from the hollowed place in the mountain, millions of tree trunks thudding against the forest floor, a train’s whistle echoing from the cathedral-high limestone overhangs.
This mountain ridge and then its tunnel have seen the Red River Gorge through countless periods of boom and bust: from the resonant upheaval of stone that formed the mountains and subsequent periods of slow erosion to lumber’s bountiful years and the economic chasm it left behind, to the present-day growth of tourism. It’s hard to say if the current influx of development investment around the Red will last, or if it will be as fleeting as the timber industry.
Maybe, years from now, empty shells of abandoned rental cabins and forgotten tourist attractions will speckle Powell County. Maybe the influx of tourists will continue to multiply, and the Red River Gorge will transform into a hyper-developed resort destination similar to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, in the Smoky Mountains. Only one thing is sure: you’ll have to drive through the Nada Tunnel to find out.
Special thanks to Debbi Rose, Larry Meadows and the Red River Gorge Historical Society & Museum for sharing their wealth of knowledge on the history of the Nada Tunnel and Powell County, Kentucky.
About the author
Amelia Loeffler is a born-and-raised Kentuckian currently living in Nashville, Tennessee. She is a graduate of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a bachelor of arts degree in English and Geography. Amelia’s work can be found in Variant Literature, Chestnut Review, South Florida Poetry Journal and is forthcoming in Poetry.