Starr's Cave Park and Preserve

Starr’s Cave Park & Preserve is located off Irish Ridge Road about a mile outside of Burlington on Starr’s Cave Park Road. The 184-acre park offers two miles of hiking trail and is a place rich with natural and cultural history. Rock formations along Flint Creek in Starr’s Cave Park & Preserve are found no where else in the world. The bluffs are composed of limestone and dolomite and contain hints of the area’s past, frozen in time as fossils. These fossils include brachiopods, crinoids, cup coral, and gastropods. Besides Starr’s Cave, there are two other caves, Devil’s Kitchen and Crinoid Cavern. Unlike Starr’s Cave, these two were not formed naturally but instead are manmade. Word has it that mineral prospectors were looking for zinc back in the 1920s. To see what lay behind the surface, they blasted the rock with dynamite, creating large openings for future park explorers to marvel at and explore.