Mammoth Cave’s Rich Past

In this installment of ‘History Off the Beaten Path,’ we visit the history of the Mammoth Caves.

Mammoth Cave National Park sees more than 500,000 visitors a year. Courtesy of Deena Bouknight

The forested and grassy areas around America’s 26th national park belies what exists underneath. Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park is considered the most extensive known cave system in the world, with more than 400 miles of explored passageways and many more expected to be discovered in the future.

During the War of 1812, the cave system offered a necessary chemical compound: saltpeter, a main ingredient in gunpowder. The war ended in 1815 and demand for the compound decreased. However, miners left the cave and passageways open, and as early as 1816, entrepreneurs, adventurers, spelunkers, and guides began converging on the area to capitalize on the tourism that such a natural wonder offered: stalactites, stalagmites, gypsum formations, eyeless creatures, and a room (rotunda) that is almost 11,000 square feet.

The Rotunda inside Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Public Domain

The people who are the historical backbone of Mammoth Cave, which became a national park in 1941, are worth spotlighting. Their presence, bravery, and doggedness put the elaborate cave system on the map, so to speak.

Explorers and Guides

Historic signatures adorn the ceiling in Gothic Avenue, seen on tours offered at Mammoth Cave. Names of miners, guides, and visitors used smoke from lamps or candles to write their names on the ceiling. Dave Bunnell/CC BY-SA 4.0

Kentucky lawyer Franklin Gorin and his business partner A.A. Harvey were the first known to own the entrance to Mammoth Cave, as well as 1,600 surrounding acres along the Green River. They promoted it as a tourist attraction in 1838. The pair sold it for unknown reasons a year later to Dr. John Croghan of Louisville, Kentucky.

Suffering from tuberculosis, Dr. Croghan hoped the cave would offer therapeutic benefits for sufferers like himself. He established a cave sanatorium for five months as an experiment in tuberculous health care.

The plan failed and patients did not improve in the cave, but Dr. Croghan’s ownership of the property was important for other reasons. He improved an inn, established better roads to Mammoth Cave, and, importantly, he became the owner of enslaved African American Stephen Bishop, who had ventured to Mammoth Cave with his previous owner, Franklin Gorin.

Bishop became Mammoth Cave’s nationally acclaimed tour guide and explorer. When Dr. Croghan first purchased the cave, eight miles of passages were explored. During his years as a guide, Bishop discovered 10 additional miles, introducing tourists to the now-popular narrow passageway known as “Fat Man’s Misery,” the underground River Styx, and much more.

Eventually gaining his freedom and marrying, Bishop worked as a guide from his teenage years to age 37, when he died in 1857 for unreported reasons. He is buried not far from Mammoth Cave’s entrance, in Old Guide’s Cemetery.

Map of the passageways in Mammoth Cave as drawn by enslaved guide Stephen Bishop. Public Domain

Bishop’s descendants, and descendants of other formerly enslaved black cave guides, such as Mat Bransford and Will Garvin, continue to live in the area. In fact, Jerry Bransford was a fifth-generation guide until he retired recently.

A Tragic Incident

From the mid- to latter-19th century, notables such as writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, actor Edwin Booth (brother of the infamous John Wilkes), and magazine photographer Frances Johnston also brought national acclaim to Mammoth Cave. Emerson visited in 1850 and wrote the poem “Illusions,” based on his cave-tour experience; Booth, in 1876, recited a soliloquy from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” in a large amphitheater-like room in the cave; and, Johnston experimented with pyrotechnic powders to “flash-light” published images of the cave’s interior.

And then, cave explorer and promoter Floyd Collins inadvertently made Mammoth Cave a household name. Collins was trying to find a tourist-worthy cave route closer to the main Mammoth Cave entrance than his family’s Crystal Cave attraction 10 miles away. However, his ankle got stuck while trying to enlarge a passageway in Sand Cave on Jan. 30, 1925. The 37-year-old had entered an opening and explored, but 150 feet from the exit his foot dislodged a 27-pound rock and wedged him in.

Sand Cave entrance. Courtesy of Deena Bouknight

All across the country, people listened to radio broadcasts for more than two weeks detailing rescue efforts. These involved everyone from Floyd’s brother Homer to engineers, geologists, and friends. Thousands of people flocked to the site, causing Kentucky authorities to call in law enforcement and troops to keep order.

The main reporter filing national wire-service stories was William Burke Miller. He earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1926 for his interviews with Collins in the tight space. Through 14 days of cold temperatures, rain, snow, and exertion night and day, rescue efforts failed and Collins died. But so much attention was paid to Mammoth Cave that Congress started the process to create a national park.

The almost 53,000-acre Mammoth Cave National Park is worth visiting for its geological wonders. Yet the site in rural south-central Kentucky is just as appealing due to its fascinating history.

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