Fallsburg Falls

By Chris Erwin
When I was a teenager, I used to head for the Fallsburg Falls to fish, hang with friends and of course take a date now and then. It was nothing but a field with an old sandy road where you could pull off State Rt3. You could drive into a field where you could park your car or truck and walk to the falls and the downstream area of Blaine Creek.

It was a secluded weedy place, which at times was marshy and soft and easy place to get stuck if you weren’t playing close attention to where you walked.
It was more moons ago than most of you have been alive, like most things of the 60s the world has changed and so has Fallsburg Falls.

Today, Bob & Mackie Crum along with their son and daughter, Sherry Samuel and Bobby Crum are owners and operators of The Falls Campground. The campground has 66 campsites with electric, water, offering both 30 and 50 amp. service; it also has a pump station. They offer one or two-room cabins along with efficiencies they call small or large.

The campground has a playground, restrooms; beach showers and shelters for groups. In the area just behind the registration office they have built a basketball court and RV storage area.
Retaining walls have been constructed to control much of the flooding; all in all, it’s a beautiful place with large balls of Pompous grass lining the roads in the upper end.

Sherry Samuel was working the day I visited, she pointed out to me that in the early 1800, there was a grist mill located at the falls. It was a huge grinding stone powered by a hydro-turbine the only one of its kind east of the Mississippi. They are no trace of it today, only the stories of the old-timers that has been passed down from one generation to another.

The campground is just five miles from the boat dock at Yatesville Lake, at present it is a shorter drive to the dock from the Falls Campground to the Yatesville boat dock than it is from the Pleasant Ridge campground which is part of Yatesville Lake State Park. However, Mike Sullivan, the manager of Pleasant Ridge Campground told me it was in the plans to build a road from the main dock to the campground which would cut the 12-mile drive down to less than 2 miles, but they are no completions or starting dates at this time.

If you would like to make a reservation at the Falls Campground, you can contact the campground by calling 606-826-0212 the address is Falls Campground State Route 3, PO box 643 Fallsburg KY, 41230. Chris Erwin is the founder and publisher of Kentucky Angling News an on-line magazine available at www.kentuckyangling.com/magazine Chris can be reached by email chris@ashlandbeacon.com or trimmer308@windstream.net