World United States Kentucky Mammoth Cave National Park

Mike and Roxanne travel east

Mammoth Cave Oct 26, 2007

Oct. 26

We are in Mammoth Cave National Park at the Diamond Caverns RV Resort. This is an RPI resort, so we are only paying $8.00 a night.

We spend the afternoon driving around the area, looking at antiques, going to Wal-Mart and getting thoroughly turned around but finally find our way home.

This morning we headed into the Park to check out cave tours. I am determined to do this.

We pick the New Entrance Tour; it is 2 hours but only ¾ of a mile long. Of course the first is a series of 300 steps, going down.

Native Americans first used Mammoth Cave over 2,000 years ago for harvesting gypsum. Artifacts have been found at the Historic Entrance.

A bear hunter John Houchins first discovered the cave in the late 1790's. By the war of 1812 it was being used to extract saltpeter for use in making gunpowder. At this time slaves were brought in to mine the mineral.

Around 1816 people began visiting the caves and in 1838 Stephen Bishop and Nat and Nick Bransford, slaves of the cave's owner, became renowned as guides.

Bishop spent all his free time in the cave, exploring unknown area and embellished his tours with little known facts.

Gradually over time the people of Kentucky realized that the caves needed to be preserved for future generations and the National Park System received ownership in 1936.

Exploration by Cave Research Foundation and the National Speleological Society continues to this time. New passages and wonders are being found all the time. Some of these may be open to the public in the future but at this time only about 15 miles of the almost 400 miles of underground passages are open.

The park encompasses 53,000 acres but the passageways are on multiple levels. Many of the area have no access other than by rope descent and no lighting other than headlamps or lanterns. Two of the tours offered are lantern tours.

Our guide, Josh, is very informative and no one is able to stump him on the questions. Most of the cave we walk through is no longer forming, but the last section is still forming. Here are the stalactites, stalagmites and columns. There are formations that look like curtains and in this are we find a small frog and crickets.

Jerry, who escorted us out of the cave was born and raised in this area as were his father, grandfather and great grandfather. His great grandfather raised money to buy his freedom from slavery by catching the sightless fish in the caves. Jerry now volunteers part time in the caves.

The rest of the afternoon is spent at the spa at the resort getting caught up on the journals and pictures.