Munfordville, Kentucky and Wiltshire, England have some things in common. They’ve both seen civil war battles, they are both predominantly rural and they both have Stonehenges. The difference is that one henge is from the neolithic period and ours is from the turn of this 21st century.
Kentucky Stonehenge was built by the former mayor of Munfordville, Chester Fryer. He recently shared this with Pat McDonogh of Louisville’s Courier Journal, “One day I was on the computer and saw Stonehenge and I said, ‘I can build that.’ I sat there and studied it and figured out how many feet across it is and where each rock sits. It’s built just like the first one. I did it all myself. I never could work with nobody because they get to telling you how to do it and mess you up,” he said.
Fryer’s circle of rocks has the same diameter, same spacing and the same number of rocks as the original Stonehenge. They are aligned with the compass and the sun shines right through them on the longest day of the year, Summer Solstice.
Fryer also shared with McDonogh, “In 2000, I went over a thousand acres of ground getting the rocks. I bought ‘em all for $10 a piece. I cut the ends off and poured cement around them and stood ‘em up. That’s the reason I can’t breathe good now, from cutting all those stones. I’ve probably only got $4,000 to $5,000 in it.”
That sounds like a bargain to us!
So if you’re traveling down Interstate 65 in Kentucky, slide off that exit 65 – and just about a mile down the road you’ll find this new creation of one of the world’s oldest attractions. Google & Siri know just where it is if you ask them to take you there. It’s in Chester’s neighborhood, right beside his house, where he has public parking for all admirers. See you there!
