John Prine's abandoned old prison

In John Prine's 1971 song 'Paradise', one of the images he conjures of the destroyed Muhlenberg County landscape is 'the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill' -- a reference to the ruins of the Airdrie Iron Furnace, a stone industrial complex built in 1855 on a bluff above the Green River. The 'prison' name derives from around 1884 when Kentucky briefly housed approximately fifteen prisoners at the site to quarry stone for the State Penitentiary at Eddyville; they were kept in the old stone machine shop, and locals called it 'the old prison' ever after. Prine, who spent childhood summers nearby, absorbed this piece of regional folklore.

The Airdrie Iron Furnace has its own extraordinary history. It was built by Robert Alexander, who brought over 200 workers and a steam engine from Scotland to develop an ironworks on 17,000 acres along the Green River. The furnace, approximately 55 feet tall, was described as one of the largest in the world at the time. Three attempts to make it work failed in succession, and Alexander eventually abandoned the venture after spending over $300,000. The ghost settlement of Airdrie grew up around the ruins.

The furnace ruins are located on private land and are not formally open to the public, though they are reportedly reachable on foot from a nearby boat ramp through wooded terrain. A historical marker for the Airdrie Furnace Site stands on US 431 (now partly renamed John Prine Avenue) in Drakesboro and is publicly accessible. A group called Friends of Airdrie Park has been working to raise funds to restore the site.