Rob Stone Shoots, Hebron, KY (2026)

09/03/2026

FLY WITH ME THROUGH ONE OF THE OLDEST AND CREEPIEST LOOKING HOUSES STILL STANDING IN NORTHERN KENTUCKY. 👻

📍 Petersburg, Kentucky

This is the historic John Tanner House, and it has been standing here for more than two centuries.

Exactly how old it is isn’t completely settled. Historic records date it anywhere from the late 1700s to around 1810, but Kentucky’s historic inventory identifies it as the oldest existing stone house in Boone County.

The Tanner name goes back to the beginning of Petersburg itself. Reverend John Tanner established Tanner’s Station here in 1789, the settlement that eventually became Petersburg.

More than 200 years later, the old stone house is still here.

Fly through it with me and tell me this place doesn’t look like it has some stories to tell.

09/02/2026

MOST OF THIS HISTORIC BOONE COUNTY FARM IS ALREADY GONE. NOW THE QUESTION IS WHETHER THE HOUSE HAS TO GO WITH IT. 🏡

📍 2788 Hathaway Road, Union, Kentucky

I’ve posted about this before but with all of this buzz around overdevelopment, I feel it’s worth another look 👀

More than 20 years ago, when the Blankenbecker Riley Farm was being documented for the National Register of Historic Places, its future was already a concern. Development was spreading rapidly through this part of Boone County, and unfortunately, those concerns turned out to be justified. At the time, the historic district covered roughly 120 acres and included 16 buildings, two structures and an object. Historians described it as “one of Boone County’s finest collections of farm outbuildings.” Today, much of that historic farmstead is gone, but one very important piece remains..the 1913 Blankenbecker Riley farmhouse.

The history here reaches back to 1848, when the Blankenbecker family settled on the property. The house standing today was built in 1913, replacing an earlier log homestead. When historians surveyed the property, a surviving portion of that original log dwelling was still standing behind the house and being used as a studio.

The 1913 house retained original woodwork and early gas lighting fixtures, originally powered by acetylene produced right there on the farm. Even the iron fence that once stood in front of the house had local history. It was made by Stewart Iron Works in Covington.

Surrounding the house was an incredible collection of historic farm buildings, including a mid 1800s timber stock barn, dairy barn, corn cribs, milk houses, chicken coops, buggy house, meat shed, root cellar and cistern. There was also a tenant house dating to around 1890 that was originally occupied by African American farm tenants and later by white tenants. Parts of its interior had actually been salvaged from the original log homestead. That tenant house is gone today, but I shot it before the bulldozers got it. I’ll post a link below👇

For generations, this was a working Boone County farm where families raised livestock and grew corn and to***co. The Riley family continued actively farming here until 1983.

Then came the development plans. In 2022, a rezoning request involving this property and neighboring land covered roughly 185 acres and proposed hundreds of new homes. One of the conditions specifically addressed the “preservation or documentation” of the Blankenbecker Riley farmhouse. Later that year, professional historic documentation of the farm was completed for Grand Communities LLC, a land development company affiliated with Fischer Homes.

I’ve posted about this house before, and I’ve spoken directly with Boone County Judge Executive Gary Moore about its future. Because the property is privately owned, there are limits to what the county can do. More concerning is that Boone County records show a residential demolition permit has already been issued for 2788 Hathaway Road. The farmhouse is still standing today, but its future is clearly in question.

Maybe saving the farm as a whole is no longer possible. But the 1913 farmhouse is still standing, and that raises a pretty simple question: does the house have to disappear too?

Historic houses can be incorporated into new developments. We actually have a great example right here in Northern Kentucky. I recently posted about a historic farmhouse in Fort Mitchell that was preserved while a newer neighborhood was developed around it. The old house is still there today, surrounded by newer homes, showing that development and preservation don’t always have to be one or the other. I’ll put a link to that post below too.👇

More than 20 years ago, people were already concerned about what development could mean for this historic farm. We now know how much of it was ultimately lost. The farm as it once existed may already be gone. The house isn’t. Hopefully somebody decides it’s worth working around. I’m talking to you Fischer Homes

09/02/2026

THIS 84 YEAR OLD KENTUCKY MOVIE THEATER HAS BEEN DARK FOR DECADES. NOW THERE’S A REAL EFFORT TO TURN THE LIGHTS BACK ON.

📍 Marianne Theatre, Bellevue, Kentucky

Sitting along Fairfield Avenue is one of Northern Kentucky’s surviving neighborhood movie theaters, and there’s now a serious effort underway to give it another life.

The Marianne opened in 1942 and was built for theater owner Peter L. Smith, who named it after his daughter Marianne. He also had another Bellevue theater called the Sylvia, named after his other daughter.

The Marianne was designed with about 540 seats and had neon, glass block, terrazzo floors, a stage and one huge auditorium. Upstairs was a “crying room” where parents with fussy babies could watch through a window and listen through a speaker without disturbing the rest of the audience. Some of the old theater equipment is amazingly still inside today.

The Marianne showed movies for decades before apparently going dark around 2000, although the exact closing date and even the final movie have become a bit of a mystery.

Then Hollywood came to Bellevue.

In 2014, the Marianne was used as a filming location for The Blunderer, later released as A Kind of Murder, starring Patrick Wilson and Jessica Biel. Vintage vehicles lined Fairfield Avenue and the old Marianne became part of a Hollywood movie set.

That same year, the City of Bellevue purchased the theater. Several ideas for bringing it back have come and gone since then, but the Marianne is still here and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Now there’s another chance to bring it back.

The nonprofit Marianne Arts & Education Center is working with Bellevue on a plan to restore the theater and give it a new life with movies, live performances, community events and educational programs. The entire project is currently estimated at around $2.5 to $3 million, so community support is going to be a huge part of making this happen.

People have been wanting to see this place come back for years. The Facebook group “Reopen Marianne Theater in Bellevue, Kentucky” has more than 750 members supporting that idea.

I photograph a lot of historic places after their stories have already ended. I’d much rather come back here someday and photograph this marquee glowing again.

If you remember seeing a movie at the Marianne, tell us what you saw and what you remember. And if you want to see this place saved, follow the restoration effort, volunteer, donate if you’re able, or share this post and help get more eyes on what they’re trying to do.

There aren’t many neighborhood theaters like this left. Hopefully we get to see the Marianne open its doors again.

Marianne Theater

09/02/2026

THIS MESSAGE FROM KENTUCKY TOURISM CHANGED EVERYTHING FOR ME. 📸

Years ago I took this photo at the Rabbit Hash General Store. It was my pup Lady🌈 sitting in front of that beautiful red Chevy truck. I posted it like I had posted plenty of other photos, and then one person saw it and loved it. That’s really all it took.

Someone with Kentucky Tourism reached out and asked if they could use it. Before I knew it, the photo was showing up in tourism ads and magazines like Kentucky Monthly and American Road with “Photo by Rob Stone” underneath it. Seeing my name printed in a magazine for the first time made me think, maybe I actually have something here.

Since then, photography has taken me places I never could have imagined. I’ve had some unbelievable experiences, from seeing my dog photos show up on national television, to shooting with Bill Farmer for Disney’s It’s a Dog’s Life, to winning the Roebling Bridge photo contest, where the award was an opportunity to climb all the way to the top of the bridge. There have been so many cool things that have happened because of photography, but I still think back to this message and realize how important that first little bit of encouragement was.

So thank you, Kentucky Tourism. The person who sent this probably had no idea what that simple message would mean to me. One person saw something in my photography, loved it and gave me the confidence to think maybe I really did have something worth pursuing.

That’s why I wanted to share this. If there’s something you love doing, keep doing it and keep putting it out there. Don’t get discouraged because something doesn’t get a bunch of likes or because it seems like nobody is paying attention. Sometimes all it takes is one person to see what you’re doing and believe there’s something there. You just never know who is looking or where it might lead.

Kentucky Tourism

09/02/2026

ONE OF THESE HOUSES IS DEFINITELY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS… AND THERE’S A REALLY GOOD REASON IT’S STILL HERE.

📍 Fort Mitchell, Kentucky

This is the old Kruempelman farmhouse, built around 1890 and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Long before the large homes surrounding it were here, this was part of the Kruempelman family farm, with fields, gardens and pasture stretching across land that looks completely different today.

Eventually development came and much of the old farmland became a neighborhood filled with large new homes. But instead of losing the farmhouse along with the fields, it was saved and the development grew around it. Today the old house is still sitting there among homes built more than a century later, and even the street carries the Kruempelman name.

I think this is something worth showing because development and preservation don’t always have to be one or the other. Obviously every situation is different and saving an old structure isn’t always possible, but when it is, I’d love to see more developers consider working around pieces of history instead of automatically removing them.

The neighborhood still got built. The land still changed. New homes still went up. But more than 130 years later, there’s something here that tells you what this place was before any of them existed.

Sometimes keeping the old doesn’t take anything away from the new. It gives the new neighborhood something you can’t build from scratch: history.

09/01/2026

LETS GO UNDERGROUND..

📍 Alexandria Community Park, Alexandria, Kentucky

In case you missed my photos earlier, this abandoned structure is hidden in the woods at Alexandria Community Park.

Long before this was a park, these 80+ acres were part of Alexandria’s old municipal reservoir system. A U.S. Geological Survey report from the 1950s describes the city drawing water from a reservoir on Brush Creek, treating it at a filtration plant and then pumping it into Alexandria’s water system.

Today, the reservoir is gone, but a surprising amount of the old infrastructure is still hiding in the woods. Concrete chambers, huge cast iron pipes, old valves, basins and massive stone walls are still there.

This time, come along for the flight as we go over the ruins, drop down into the old structure and fly right through it.

This one came from a follower, so keep sending me places to check out!

09/01/2026

THIS MAY LOOK LIKE AN ABANDONED RAILROAD TRACK IN THE WOODS, BUT IT’S ONE OF THE STEEPEST RAILROAD GRADES EVER BUILT IN AMERICA.

📍 Madison Incline, Madison, Indiana

You want a rabbit hole to go down? Check this out. The Madison Incline is easily one of the most fascinating places I’ve explored. Construction on the Madison & Indianapolis Railroad began in 1836, but engineers had a huge problem. Madison sits along the Ohio River with steep hills rising behind it, and they needed a way to get trains from the riverfront up to the higher ground above town. Their solution was this. Workers carved a railroad through the hillside, creating an incline that stretched 7,012 feet, climbed more than 400 feet and averaged a staggering 5.89% grade. It was so steep that ordinary locomotives couldn’t handle it. Early trains were moved using horses and later a cog system before the massive Reuben Wells locomotive was built specifically to tackle the incline.

The railroad helped connect Madison with Indianapolis and became an important part of Indiana’s early railroad history. More than 180 years later, the enormous cut through the hill is still here. It’s one of those places where a photo really doesn’t show the scale of it. Standing between these rock walls and realizing people carved a railroad through this hillside in the 1800s is pretty incredible.

Have you ever explored the Madison Incline? If you know of another forgotten piece of railroad history around that I should check out, send it my way.

09/01/2026

Please follow my TikTok 🙏🏻

09/01/2026

AN ABANDONED UNDERGROUND BUILDING IS HIDDEN IN THE WOODS OF NORTHERN KENTUCKY.

📍 Alexandria Community Park, Alexandria, Kentucky

I’ve really been appreciating all the messages lately from people giving me places to check out. Some are places I already know about, some send me down a rabbit hole, and every once in a while somebody points me toward something like this.

A follower told me about an old structure hidden in the woods at Alexandria Community Park. What I found was a maze of crumbling concrete rooms, underground chambers, huge cast iron pipes, old valves and massive stone walls disappearing into the woods.

So naturally, I had to figure out what it was.

Long before this was a community park, these 80+ acres were part of Alexandria’s old municipal reservoir system. The City of Alexandria says the dams and spillway wall that carried overflow from the upper lake into the lower basin were part of a WPA project during the Roosevelt era.

Even more interesting are the ruins hidden beside it.

A U.S. Geological Survey report from the 1950s describes Alexandria’s water system as drawing from a reservoir on Brush Creek, with the water treated at a filtration plant before being pumped into the city’s distribution system. The concrete chambers, large pipes, valves and basins still standing in the woods appear to be remnants of that old waterworks infrastructure.

Today the reservoir system is gone, the woods have taken over and Alexandria Community Park surrounds what remains. But if you wander off the main paths, pieces of the old system are still there.

This is exactly the kind of place I love finding. Something most people probably walk right past without realizing how much history is sitting back there.

And this one came from a follower.

Keep sending me places please!

08/31/2026

17k followers! Thank you all so much for the likes, shares and comments.

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