The Louisville Mega Caverns began as a limestone mine in the 1930s.
Following that, it was used for several different purposes, including a fallout shelter during the Cold War and later underground warehousing.
But for the last 15 years, it has the setting for a Christmas light show extravaganza.
And this week's tapestry segment on arts and culture, we delve deep into the lights under Louisville.
So lights in their Louisville is one of the ten best Christmas light shows in the nation.
We've been ranked ten best by USA Today for the past five years running.
We are probably one of the preeminent shows here in not only in the state of Kentucky, but within the region at large.
It's 1.3 miles of complete drive thru and we have six and a half million lights.
We have everything from inflatables to laser shows to disco section.
We have all types of different themes that are culturally relevant in today's age.
And then we have, you know, obviously Christmas lights.
We have everything from themes like Under the Sea to Patriotic, and we have what we call the Enchanted Forest.
So we create all of these themes and we've created fresh and new every single year, as well as the fact that we have first of its kind for any Christmas drive through this year.
We have a Christmas hologram, actually three Christmas holograms.
I think the preeminent benefit is we can have the light show literally all day.
So we open at 9:30 a.m., we close at 10 p.m.. Also, I think people don't realize this, but when it's raining out, you really can't see lights.
When it's raining out an outdoor show because everything gets blurry through your windows.
So.
So that's one of the benefits of just being able to kind of roll down your windows without worrying about temperature or worrying about the weather or things like that.
You know, we're here down there every single day and we're kind of used to it.
But when we watch people, people are looking around and they have this incredible amount of awe and wonder of, Hey, how did this come to being?
Because we're really smack dab in the center of Louisville.
And and that's very, very unique to see where you have an underground mine that's smack dab in the middle of a major metropolitan city.
So I think we're the greatest light show aboveground and underground.
And we continue to grow it.
We continue to experience it.
I mean, even this year, we grew 20%.
Last year we grew another 10%.
So if you see throughout the course of the 50 years of how we've grown, everything, not only from different themes and different textural elements, we've continued to grow in terms of length and we've continue to grow a half a mile since the beginning, and we put heart and soul into lights in Louisville, and we know that it is an incredible familial experience for a lot of families.
They've they've made it a tradition and so we want to make sure and we honor that tradition with their families.
We want to make sure that that brings families together and it brings joy together and brings friends together.
And I think that's that's one of the things that we take with a heavy amount of heart, because we know it's a wonderful privilege to do this for not only the city of Louisville, but the Commonwealth of Kentucky at large.
How cool is that?
As well as his Christmas sweater.
The lights will be on display at the mega cavern in Louisville until January 1st, 2024.
Don't miss it.