Drive on Out Traditional Geocache

Parking along side of road, watch for traffic. Not in stonewall, you don't even have to touch it!

Drive on out Greendale Road and look around. Less than two miles from the cache is the little settlement of Greendale. In the area there was a reformatory for juvenile delinquents.

Broom making circa 1911

The reformatory had several names through the years. In 1923 there were 32 employees at the Kentucky House of Reform.

John DeMoisey was a graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1934 and played baseball with the old American Association for a time and was a former UK star. He later served as recreation director for the Kentucky Houses of Reform at Greendale and became superintendent there in 1941, a post he held three years before resigning to manage the Blue Grass farms of the LeBus brothers.

At one time the reformatory was known as Kentucky Village. Articles pertaining to Gov. Nunn show that during his term one of the items he addressed was:

"_Closure of Kentucky Village, an institution outside Lexington where the state for 74 years had committed its juvenile delinquents. Nunn paid a surprise visit to the institution early in his term and was appalled by conditions there. The state switched to a system of regional centers geared to specific age groups, interests and seriousness of offenses. (he was elected 1967)"

It was also known as the Kentucky Village Reform School (for boys and girls) and later as Greendale Reformatory. Here is a couple of quotes I found about the place: “Greendale was a horrible place“; “It used to be called Greendale which was the reformatory, and I remember horrible things happening at Greendale.”

It was closed in 1972, then some of the buildings were torn down and new ones built. This complex was renamed in honor of Dr. Luke P. Blackburn, 26th Governor of Ky., in recognition of his pioneer efforts in prison reform. Elected Governor in 1879, after campaigning to relieve conditions at Frankfort Penitentiary, he asked for drastic changes in penal system in first message to legislature. It is now The Blackburn Correctional Complex, opened in 1972, and is the largest minimum security facility operated by the Department of Corrections and is operated as a 594 man facility, located at 3111 Spurr Road, Lexington, Kentucky 40511.

Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation at the Blackburn Correctional Complex, Lexington, Ky.

Once the TRF mission of horses helping people and people helping horses was established in New York at the Wallkill Correctional Facility, it was only natural that the prison farm program would spread to the place where the horse is king, the great state of Kentucky.

In 1999, the TRF opened a farm at the Blackburn Correctional Complex in Lexington. Shortly before the first TRF horses arrived, an old dairy barn was converted to accommodate the horses. Today, it is among the TRF largest farms, with about 80 horses living out their retirement years on 100 acres of prime Kentucky bluegrass at the state's largest minimum security prison. Just as has happened at the other farms at correctional facilities, the inmates and the horses at Blackburn have become close friends.

"Stopwatch and I have become very close," said one inmate. "He came to Blackburn with bowed tendons in both front legs.…I spend a lot of time taking care of his legs.…[when I] walk out in the paddock and whistle he'll come running up to me because he knows I'll have a peppermint for him."