Daniel Boone's River

It is no wonder that Kentucky's Red River Gorge, a 15-mile stretch of primeval beauty bordered by 600-ft. limestone cliffs, is known as the Grand Canyon of the East. Daniel Boone is supposed to have holed up there, and the surrounding national forest bears his name. Carved out of the Cumberland Plateau, it is an almost otherworldly wonderland of castle rock formations, soaring pinnacles and natural arches. It is also a refuge for some 50 species of mammals and 275 species of birds.

Had the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had its way, the Red River Gorge would now be earmarked for submersion. But last week, yielding to unusual pressures, the corps disclosed that it was abandoning plans to build a dam there. To control seasonal floods and store water for fast-growing Lexington, 50 miles to the west, a dam will be built 5.3 miles downstream from the original site, thereby saving the most spectacular two-thirds of the gorge from flooding.

Great Obsessions. The cement pourers have been thwarted on dam projects before, but rarely--if ever--on such ecological and esthetic grounds. What rescued the Red River Gorge was frenzied activity by the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, an outpouring of statements by Kentucky biologists, and most important, intervention by some high-level Republicans, including Governor Louie Nunn, Senator John Sherman Cooper and President Richard Nixon.

As in so many crises of the environment, plans for the $11.2 million dam went unprotested until nearly too late. In 1967, the conservationists went to work. That archchampion of the wilderness, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, led hikers through the gorge to publicize its impending fate. "The building of dams is one of the great obsessions of America," he said, "but engineering values are not what we live by."

In victory, the conservationists are wary. Concerned that the gorge may yet be despoiled by speculators who might scar it with roads, cabins, camp sites and motorboat docks, University of Kentucky Agricultural Economist Carl M. Clark warned: "We saved the gorge from the water. Now we have to save it from the people." Moreover, the conservationists are well aware that many more of America's remaining wild rivers are ticketed for taming. Among some 70 dams on the corps' boards or under construction are projects that would affect the Sangamon in Illinois (the tributary taken by Abe Lincoln in leaving the backwoods), the Big Walnut in Indiana, the Snake in Idaho and the St. John in Maine.

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