It takes a half-mile hike on the relentlessly-uphill “Original Trail” to reach the Natural Bridge from the lodge at Kentucky’s Natural Bridge State Resort Park.
But, really, there’s an easier way to get up the mountain: Get a ticket to ride the Natural Bridge Sky Lift.
The half-mile-long ride was built in 1967, says Bree Curtsinger, 27, the granddaughter of Sky Lift owner Judy Shaw. “The easiest way to go up to Natural Bridge is on the Sky Lift. And then you’ve got 600 feet to walk until you’re on top of Natural Bridge.”
There, the view appears endless.
“Once you get up to the top and you look back, you can see 12 miles of mountain-side,” says Travis Marshall, the maintenance and platform manager at the Sky Lift.
Routinely, the Natural Bridge attracts visitors from Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Indiana, says Marshall, 26. “And we get people from everywhere. We’ve had ’em from Australia and Russia.”
The Sky Lift helps older visitors especially, Marshall says, “because they can’t really hike the trails up the hill.”
Want More? Naturalbridgeskyliftandgiftshop.com
