Are there eyeless fish swimming deep beneath Depot Street in Lawrenceburg?

There certainly were in 1891.

That October, future mayor of Lawrenceburg J.W. Garrett dug a well on some property he owned on Depot Street. At that time, there was not much north of Depot Street but rolling fields.

The Lawrence ‘Democrat’ explained that, after much hard digging, Garrett struck “a cave through which runs a large stream of water.” This subterranean river quickly filled the bottom of Garrett’s well, and despite the fact that a steam pump labored over the site for eleven hours, “the pool at the bottom of the well was not lowered a fraction,” and everyone was relieved to find that plentiful water could be had at the north end of town.

Garrett’s well, however, contained something besides water.

Not long after striking water, Garrett began to catch eyeless fish in the well, which is a good indicator that he had, indeed, struck a cave. The ‘Democrat’ put it this way:

“Jim Garrett will take pleasure in describing the blind fish taken out of his well at the depot, or he will show you the fish if he has any of them on hand. Being eyeless, they are readily caught with the hand.”

Most such blind fish are found in caves, like the Spring Cavefish, which was first discovered in a well like Garrett’s in Lebanon, Tennessee.

As we have mentioned before, there exist many old legends of a giant cave beneath downtown Lawrenceburg. As late as the 1960s, some old men claimed that they had gone into the cave as boys in the late 1800s from its entrance southeast of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and many such “old-timers” believed that the cave stretched from there all the way to Mile Crossing, where North Military Street crosses the railroad tracks.