Big Bone Lick State Historic Site – US-3779
Activation Date – 01 October 2026
I was scrolling through the active POTA spots when I spotted a park in France on 17 meters. I had some luck in the past with DX on this band, so I took a shot and called out to him. A voice acknowledged my call, and I exchanged a few simple phrases en Francais. I won’t exaggerate. A simple bonjour, confirmation of my park number in French, a merci, and au revoir. He was sitting somewhere southwest of Paris. I was in a field in northern Kentucky, 4100 miles away.
This was Big Bone Lick, my tenth stop on a quest to put all 44 of Kentucky’s state parks on the air for Parks on the Air — haul a radio into a park, work at least ten operators, and you’ve “activated” it. But Big Bone Lick might be the strangest and oldest ground on the whole list. Twelve to twenty thousand years ago, Ice Age giants of mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, and ancient bison came for the salt and sulfur springs here to lick the mineral-rich mud, and many of them sank into the soft bog and never got out. Thomas Jefferson got obsessed with the place, and in 1807 he sent William Clark to run the first organized fossil dig in American history; Clark shipped some three hundred bones back to the President’s House for Jefferson to lay out and study. They call this the birthplace of American paleontology. Today a herd of bison grazes where the mammoths once roamed. I didn’t get to see the bison because of time constraints. Maybe next time. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/big-bone-lick.htm
My own expedition started rocky. I had planned to hang my big end-fed wire off a telescoping mast, but the wind and the wire’s weight teamed up against me. I went back to my trusty Chameleon 25SS and then somehow, I misplaced the bolt that connects the radials to the antenna. So, I fell back on my backup stingers which, for the record, work just fine.
Nineteen contacts across three bands with solid signal reports all afternoon, and then, up on 17 meters, where DX sometimes works for me, France. We swapped reports in my rusty French, and I grinned the entire time. I could also hear a station in Romania on the same band, but he couldn’t hear me. Earlier in the day an operator in Texas chuckled when I gave my location. “Big Bone Lick” does tend to get a reaction. I’ve made my peace with the name long ago, but I recall my teenage self laughing every time I saw the road signs for the park.
What I’d change: scout the high ground. I learned afterward there are higher spots in the park that I could have set up on which could have turned a good day into a great one. The lesson I’m keeping for the day: don’t be afraid to experiment and do scout the park for better locations.
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