Gorge Journal · Market Data
If you assume the Red River Gorge second-home market sits in Powell County, where Slade and Natural Bridge are, the federal housing data says otherwise. Census figures put the seasonal-use share of Menifee County’s housing at better than fifteen percent, and Powell County’s at under one.
Which Gorge county has the most second homes?
Menifee County, by a wide margin. About one in six of its housing units is classified for seasonal, recreational or occasional use — roughly seventeen times Powell County’s share.
The figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 2019–2023 five-year estimates. The relevant counts are housing units from table B25002 and the seasonal line from table B25004, “For seasonal, recreational, or occasional use”. Margins of error are shown because at these county sizes they matter.
| County | Housing units | Seasonal-use units | Share of all units |
|---|---|---|---|
| Menifee | 3,387 | 531 ±142 | 15.7% |
| Wolfe | 3,043 | 81 ±76 | 2.7% |
| Lee | 3,227 | 56 ±34 | 1.7% |
| Powell | 5,619 | 52 ±43 | 0.9% |
| Estill | 6,847 | 37 ±32 | 0.5% |
The margins of error are the first thing to check on county numbers this small, and this particular gap survives them comfortably. Take Menifee’s estimate at the bottom of its range — 389 units — and its seasonal share is still about 11.5% of all housing. Take Powell’s at the top of its range — 95 units — and Powell is still only about 1.7%. Even on the least favourable reading of both, Menifee’s seasonal share is several times Powell’s. That is a real structural difference, not survey noise.
The county with the Gorge’s front door has almost no second homes. The county next to it is one-sixth second homes.
Why the split is this lopsided
The data shows the split; it does not explain it, and it is worth being careful about which story you attach to it. One caution matters more than the rest: the Census category does not distinguish a climbing cabin near the Gorge from any other occasionally-occupied house in the same county. Menifee County’s recreation draw is not only the Gorge — the Forest Service’s Cave Run Lake recreation area, an 8,270-acre lake inside the same Daniel Boone National Forest, pulls its own second-home demand. A lake house and a Gorge cabin land in the same row of this table.
Powell County’s low share is the more interesting half of the finding. Powell holds the most visited entrances to the area, and it still reads as an overwhelmingly owner-occupied, year-round county. The visitor economy and the second-home economy are not the same economy, and in this corner of Kentucky they are not even in the same county. If you want the county boundaries themselves, I have written up which counties the Red River Gorge actually spans.
What a cabin buyer should do with this
In my experience the practical value of a number like this is not in picking a county — it is in knowing what you are walking into before you start comparing properties. A market where one in six units is a second home behaves differently from one where almost every house is somebody’s year-round residence: the comparable sales are different, the neighbours’ expectations about short-term guests are different, and the sellers’ reasons for selling are different. Reading a market as “the Gorge” when the housing stock changes this sharply across a county line is how buyers end up surprised by a comp set that does not support their offer.
The sensible next step is to treat each county as its own market and look at what is actually listed in each. If you are early in that process, start with cabins for sale in the Red River Gorge and the breakdown of how the Gorge subdivisions differ from one another.
What this data does not say
Three limits, stated plainly. It is a five-year estimate covering 2019 through 2023, so it describes a period, not this month. “Seasonal, recreational or occasional use” is a vacancy classification, which means a cabin that happened to have guests in it at survey time is counted differently from one that sat empty — short-term rentals do not map cleanly onto this line. And none of it is a price, a rent, a yield or an availability figure. It tells you the shape of the housing stock, which is a useful thing to know and a different thing from knowing what a property is worth.
Questions about Gorge-area second homes
Does a high seasonal-use share mean a county is a better investment?
Not on its own. It tells you the housing stock is already oriented toward occasional occupancy, which can mean an established market and can equally mean more competition for the same guests. It is context for a decision, not a signal to act on.
Are short-term rentals counted in these numbers?
Only partly, and not reliably. The Census line counts units classified as vacant and held for seasonal, recreational or occasional use. A short-term rental occupied at the time of the survey is classified elsewhere, so this table under-counts the active rental pool rather than measuring it.
Why show margins of error at all?
Because in counties of three to seven thousand housing units the sample is small and the uncertainty is real. Quoting a county estimate without its margin is how a survey range gets reported as a hard fact. Here the gap between Menifee and Powell is wide enough to survive both margins, which is exactly why it is worth reporting.
Last updated November 3, 2026.
By Marcos Gil, REALTOR® — Keller Williams Commonwealth · KY Real Estate License No. 296259 · Call or text (859) 310-1209.
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