I've written about this project before. The essays which are written will be posted here and, as soon as I have a suitable space worked out, I'll be recording them for a podcast.
Anyone who has any input on the essays, either corrections or additional information, add a note and I'll look to include it.
Please, enjoy.
Caves are liminal spaces. They exist as places which are not the earth we live on and know, nor yet fully something else. They are portals which transport us from one location to another both literally and metaphorically. In ancient times there were caves thought to be entrances to an underworld, or to provide access to spirits who could help an oracle foretell the future.
To enter a cave is an act of exploration. It is a place where a person delves into their own psyche either by confronting fears of dark and unknown places, or seeking to revel in them by plumbing the depths which may be revealed. How far the average person is willing to go into a cave is often a reflection of their eagerness to explore the parts of their personality which lie beneath those more readily exposed to all.
In less metaphysical terms caves are places where goods can be stored. Beneath Missouri vast reserves of cheese are held in refrigerated conditions. In salt mines below Texas and Louisiana there are vast reserves of crude oil. And caves are places where slaves fleeing the inhumanity of bondage sought refuge, where thieves and criminals hid - and hide - their pilfered goods, where smugglers still store wares while dodging the revenue department, ATF, and Border Control.
And sometimes a cave is a huge geological feature which we can’t help explore. Like the Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave System in Kentucky.
The modern history of this four-hundred plus miles of mapped caves dates back to the late seventeen hundreds. Its story goes back much, much further.
Somewhere about three-hundred-and-fifty million years ago the area that is now Kentucky was part of a sea bed. An accumulation of the minerals calcite and aragonite from coral and shellfish formed a deep layer which became limestone. Above this further accumulations became a thick cap of sandstone which formed a layer that protected the more friable limestone below.
From being at the bottom of an ocean, geological ages passed and what was once ocean became land. Further east it was plant matter which ancient times turned into something different, coal. The coal mined there has provided heat, employment, health issues, and blighted landscapes since the mid-seventeen hundreds. But over in the middle of the state that sandstone cap provided a mostly perfect cover for the limestone beneath. Mostly, because amongst the sand which hand accumulated on that ancient sea bed there was also more shellfish and they provided little pockets through which water wormed its way, dissolving the limestone created by the shells, and creating tiny channels to the larger deposits below.
As the water trickled through these channels caverns were created. Some of these joined with others created by different water channels, even by rivers flowing from outside. With the passage of time the channels from above become blocked by the sandstone wearing in, with the formation of soils and vegetation, from small shifts in the landscape caused by tremors far away, or tree-roots nearer by.
Now there are large, unseen, chambers which are sealed off, or linked by narrow passages, all sitting beneath a landscape which looks solid, permanent, immutable.
But into this subterranean world there are entrances and through these entrances comes life. It starts with the small creatures, who are followed by bigger ones. Fish and crustaceans live in the waters which flow through and pool in the caves. All manner of invertebrates and arachnids inhabit the caves - some using it as a handy base. Birds and bats use them as safe places to roost and nest and, over decades and even centuries, their droppings gather on the cave floor.
It used to be thought that these droppings, the guano, was a rich source of potassium nitrate. This chemical compound has a long history of use. It is mentioned in Indian writings from three or four hundred years before our common era. Use as a preservative of meats goes back at least hundreds of years. It was valued as a fertiliser.
And, so, deposits of guano were highly valued - all the more so during the two years of the eighteen-oh-seven to oh-nine Embargo Act, where imports were banned or under such strictures as to be unaffordable. Landowners who had caves with guano deposits saw the value of their properties, more importantly the raw material contained there-in, rise massively.
And there’s another use of potassium nitrate - making gunpowder.
Secure sources of materials to produce gunpowder became increasingly important as the new nation defended both its own territory - in the eighteen-twelve war - and then increasingly its citizens and their property on the high seas.
For a period of about twenty years this Kentucky Cave system was the most productive source of potassium nitrate in the United States. This was a necessity because Britain continued to interdict US ships. They would force US merchants to trade via British ports, denying them direct access to European markets. They also continued to impress US citizens into service in Royal Navy ships, taking them from US merchant ships if the men were thought to have been born in Britain, or formerly served in the Royal Navy.
The value of potassium nitrate to the US economy and defence capabilities was so great that in eighteen-fifty-six Congress passed a law permitting any US citizen to take ‘peaceable possession’ of any ‘deposit of guano on any island, rock, or key, not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other Government, and not occupied by the citizens of any other Government’.
Over a hundred of these possession claims were made, though most have now lapsed. Of the ten remaining three of them are disputed claims, but more a level of polite disagreement at this point - that of course may change if the locations are found to contain other valuable deposits or attain sudden strategic importance.
With the opening of new deposits via the Guano Islands the value of cave deposits dropped again.
But for the Mammoth Cave System there was so much more to offer. Part of that is its sheer scope. Today, as the Mammoth-Flint Cave System, it is known to have more than four-hundred-and-twenty miles of explored caves. Nearby two other caves systems, one of one-hundred-twenty miles and the other of thirty-four miles mapped length hold out the tantalising possibility of other connecting tunnels and caves yet to be found. Or, maybe they already have been, but the discovery has been lost for present.
That is what happened between the Mammoth and Flint systems. The official year of their being found to be connected was nineteen-seventy-two. In a first trip Patricia Crowther made her way through a narrow cavern to confirm it opened into larger caverns.
A few months later Patricia returned with colleagues and retraced the route, now going further. This time they found the name Pete. H with an arrow pointing in the direction of Mammoth Cave on the wall of a river cave. This is thought to have been left by a nineteen-thirties explorer of the caves system who died in World War Two, Pete Hanson. In honour of him the route was called Hanson’s Lost River.
The third trip, in September, found a team of six, Patricia included, taking nine hours to make their way through narrow tunnels and follow Hanson’s Lost River to where it connected with Echo River in the Mammoth Cave System.
At this time Patricia was married to fellow MIT graduate, computer programmer, and caving enthusiast, William. A few years later, after their divorce, William wrote Colossal Cave Adventure, partly for his daughters. This early text-based adventure computer game guided players through a vast labyrinth of tunnels. While the inclusion of features like an underground volcano show certain creative freedoms being taken, those knowledgeable with the Mammoth Flint System attest to the caves, tunnels, and caverns being readily identifiable. William freely admits to using data he and Patricia had collected and melding it with elements from Dungeons & Dragon campaigns he played with friends.
The impact of this initial text-based game is such that in 2019 it was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame, alongside Microsoft Solitaire, Mortal Combat, and Super Mario Kart.
And in late twenty-twenty-two this original ground-breaking and inspirational game many of us will never have heard of had a twenty-first century re-imagining with a 3-D version released as Colossal Cave. A lead developer, Roberta Williams, points directly to the original game and the impact it had on the career path she developed.
While that original Colossal Cave Adventure, and to some extent the new one, will be based on maps from the Mammoth Flint System, they are not guides to it. Such maps and guides do exist and have been worked on, improved, and extended since the first was released in eighteen-forty-two. That map showed about sixteen miles of tunnels, eight of them uncovered by Stephen Bishop, the mapper himself - including an indication of the route which would later by found to connect the Mammoth and Flint systems.
Stephen Bishop was a self-taught geologist, and speleologist. Beyond these skills he learnt Greek and Latin and read widely, as attested to by the way he sprinkled quotations and allusions through the discourses he gave on tours of the caves. And he never stopped seeking knowledge, always conversing with scholars or scientists whom he would guide around Mammoth Caves.
The map that Stephen drew has two other things to make it noteworthy. The first is he made it from memory while at the Locust Grove estate of Dr John Croghan. Croghan believed vapours in the caves would be effective in curing tuberculosis. He was wrong and the disease claimed both the doctor, and that of Stephen Bishop. Stephen was thirty-five or six at the time of his death.
There is doubt about his exact date of birth because, in common with the men who mined saltpetre from the caves, Stephen Bishop was a slave.
His 'owner', Croghan was a nephew of William Clark of Lewis and Clark renown. His being willing to let a slave build a reputation in the way Bishop was able to was unusual.
Today speleology is something ranging from hard-core hobby to casual tourism. However, today, even the very occasional spelunker has huge advantages over those exploring a few hundred years ago. Key among these are things like reliable lighting, waterproof clothing, and accurate compasses and clinometers. Other items which make such activity easier and safer are lightweight ropes, and fixings to secure it.
But people like Croghan had something different. People whose lives they could risk. The average price of a slave in the first third of the nineteenth century was around three-hundred dollars (about nine-thousand-three-hundred dollars today). Stephen Bishop came as part of the Mammoth cave estate when Croghan purchased it. Bishop's previous owner, Franklin Gorin, received him as part of settlement for a debt.
For Croghan and Gorin, Stephen Bishop was a tool to be used, possibly chattel if they viewed him as an item of personal property as opposed to business property. Risking three-hundred dollars worth of equipment to develop a tourist attraction which could recoup that many times over was not a huge risk, for the owner.
For Stephen, however, any stumble could easily lead to an extinguished light, and no easy way to relocate or relight it. With no light, retracing the route to safety becomes difficult, even impossible.
Such a fate was avoided, but Stephen did succumb to tuberculosis and the assumption that he was exposed as part of Croghan’s bizarre idea that cave vapours may help those who had the disease is reasonable.
Today vast portions of the Mammoth-Flint Cave System are well lit and easily accessible to an averagely able person. But, like large portions of United States history, plenty of darkness remains and only the bravest are willing to explore.
Previous Essays in this series:
1 - Inspiration
2 - On Free Speech
3 - A Memory of Travel
4 - Delaware
5 - Bigfoot
words by stuartcturnbull. Picture licenced from Kirsten Alana and worked in Canva