Built in 1929. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
From the record
“Cave-In-Rock State Park is an Illinois state park, on 204 acres (0.83 km2), in the town of Cave-in-Rock, Hardin County, Illinois, in the United States. The state park contains the historic Cave-In-Rock, a landmark of the Ohio River.”
Wikipedia article Cave-in-Rock State Park, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 4 National Register listings published here for Hardin County · listed in 1998 · category: Site · built in 1929.
Also known as. Caught in the Middle: The Civil War on the Lower Ohio River MPS
Precinct. Cave-In-Rock precinct
When was it built? 1929
National Register reference number.98000984- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
19 since 1994
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 19 fires within 5 miles of Cave-In-Rock
between 1994 and 2015, burning about 179 acres in total. None started naturally. 7 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Arson/incendiarism
7
Debris and open burning
5
Recreation and ceremony
3
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
2
Other causes
1
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
78 workings within 5 miles of Cave-In-Rock: 65 past producers, 5 prospects, 4 occurrences, 3 producers.
4 still produce. What was taken out: Fluorine-Fluorite, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Lead, Lead, Zinc. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Cave-In-Rock, the town this property stands in, in 20 storm reports between 1998 and 2024: 8 flood, 5 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail, 2 heavy rain.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Major flooding continued on the Ohio River from April. Based on data from river gages in nearby Pope and Gallatin Counties, the flood crest of 2011 was two to three feet higher than the 1997 flood. This was still 6 to 9 feet lower than the record crest set in 1937. The activation of the New Madrid Floodway by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spared Hardin County from an even higher crest that would have inundated even larger areas of the county. With the detonation of the Mississippi River levee at Birds Point, Missouri, the Ohio River stopped rising or rose much more slowly. At least a few riverfront homes in Elizabethtown were flooded up to two feet deep. A few homes in Cave-In-Rock were flooded, and much of the rest of the community was sandbagged. Portions of Illinois Route 1 were closed. A section of Highway 146 was sandbagged to keep it open. A couple of churches were sandbagged in Cave-In-Rock and Elizabethtown. The oldest Baptist church in Illinois sustained flooding damage in Elizabethtown. The National Guard was activated to assist with sandbagging. Flood gates were installed at Rosiclare. Parks and other recreational facilities outside of the levee protection system were flooded. County schools were closed. The ferry from Cave-In-Rock to Crittenden County, KY was shut down.
Moderate flooding continued on the Ohio River from late February. This flood crest was about a foot lower than the March, 1997 flood. Isolated evacuations of some lowland residents were conducted. Cabins at a campground at Saline Landing were flooded, and Front Street was flooded in Elizabethtown. There was sandbagging around homes in Elizabethtown and Cave-In-Rock. Several mobile homes and trailers in Hardin County were pulled away from the water. At Rosiclare, Illinois Route 146 was closed leading into town, and water was up about 5 feet along the floodgates. The ferry connecting Cave-In-Rock with the state of Kentucky was shut down because of flooded roads on the Kentucky side.
A few dozen trees were blown down. Roads in the Cave-In-Rock State Park were blocked. At the intersection of Highways 146 and 1, a country store was heavily damaged. The front porch was destroyed, and the roof was damaged by a falling tree. The roof was blown off the porch of a nearby house. On Highway 1, a carport was blown away.
In Rosiclare, several basements were flooded. Sandbagging was done around a few structures, including the only grocery store in the county. Some secondary roads were flooded and closed.
Moderate flooding of the Ohio River occurred. A portion of Illinois Route 1 was closed. There was considerable flooding of low-lying woods and fields. Rural county roads were flooded. A campground at Saline Landing was flooded, and Front Street was flooded in Elizabethtown. There was sandbagging around a few homes in Elizabethtown and Cave-In-Rock. At Rosiclare, Illinois Route 146 was closed leading into town, and water was up along a floodgate. The town of Rosiclare put up the first floodgates in the lowest sections of town. However, little or no property damage occurred in Hardin County. The ferry from Cave-In-Rock to the Kentucky shore suspended operations due to high water.
An mPING report was made for flooding on IL 1 north of Cave-in-Rock. with a public call reporting water flowing across roads near Cave-in-Rock. Radar estimated rainfall totals for the afternoon of the 8th were 1.5-2.5 inches for Cave-in-Rock and a peak of 2.5-3.5 inches further north in the county, most of which fell between 1445-1600CST.
Water rescues were conducted in the county. Thunderstorms produced rainfall rates that were estimated near one-half inch per hour on ground that received 3 to 4 inches of rain in the past week.
The Ohio River rose above flood stage around mid-month and continued rising the rest of the month. Low-lying county roads were closed. Bottomland woods and fields were inundated.
A brief tornado touchdown was observed along Route 1, 4 to 5 miles north of the community of Cave-In-Rock. Due to the very remote nature of the area, within the Shawnee National Forest, no damage could be confirmed. The parent thunderstorm displayed very strong tornadic characteristics on radar.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
1 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
Block
