Pennyrile

The Pennyrile is a broad limestone country of rolling uplands, caves and sinkholes in southern Kentucky. It takes its name from pennyroyal, a small native mint that grows in the region. Rivers and underground waters have shaped the limestone into a landscape of hollows and passages. In the 1780s American settlers moved into the western Pennyrile by way of the Ohio, Cumberland and Green rivers, establishing farms and defensive blockhouses among the older routes through the country.