The Kentucky Cave Wars

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Not too long ago, I read a novel called Starling
House by Alex E.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Harrow.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is a work of fiction, but it has footnotes
that reference local history research from that fictional setting, and
then there's also a bibliography that includes some entries that
are based on actual published research from the real world
that kind of tweaked to fit in with the setting
of the book.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
One of those.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Semi fictional bibliography entries in this novel led to today's
episode in kind of a wandering way. The name had
been changed, but it was a reference to the story
of Floyd Collins, who got trapped in a cave during
the Kentucky Cave Wars, and this became a massive news
story and a huge local spectacle. So today's episode is

(01:07):
on the Kentucky Cave Wars, starting with some of the
history of Mammoth Cave. Since Mammoth Cave was central to
the Cave Wars, we'll also be talking about Floyd Collins
and the role that his story had in the eventual
end of the cave Wars.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Various caves are known as Mammoth Cave, but the one
we're talking about is in south central Kentucky, roughly between Nashville, Tennessee,
to the southwest and Louisville, Kentucky to the northeast. A
connection between the Mammoth Cave system and the flint Ridge
System was discovered in nineteen seventy two, and now all
of this is known as the Mammoth Cave flint Ridge System.

(01:49):
This is the longest known cave system in the world,
and we don't know just how big it is. About
three hundred and sixty five miles or five hundred eighty
seven kilometers of the system has been mapped across five
different levels. Today, Mammoth Cave is a National Park which
also includes about eighty three square miles or two hundred

(02:12):
and fifteen square kilometers of land on the surface. That
surface is home to forests and grasslands and rivers. Mammoth
Cave is also a World Heritage Site of Biosphere Reserve
and an International Dark Sky Park, and it was placed
on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen ninety one.

(02:35):
The Mammoth Cave System is one of the natural wonders
of North America. Its formation dates back millions of years
as water hollowed out layers of limestone in the region.
There are all kinds of geological formations inside, including stalactites, stalagmites, pillars,
flowstone which looks like flowing water that's made of rock,

(02:55):
and cave popcorn, which looks like little knobs. The formations
really vary from one part of the cave to another,
depending on things like how wet or dry that part
of the system is. There are also underground rivers and lakes,
and all kinds of plant and animal species, many of
them adapted to living in darkness, like cave crickets, numerous

(03:16):
species of bats, and eyeless, unpigmented cavefish and crayfish.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
There are multiple entrances into this cave system today, some
of them naturally occurring and some of them built by humans.
This includes an accessible entrance with an elevator which connects
to about half a mile of accessible trails. Because of
the risk of spreading white nose syndrome, which is a
fungal infection affecting bats, visitors who are able have to

(03:46):
walk over a decontamination mat when they're leaving the caves,
and people's mobility aids have to be decontaminated as well.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
These caves have been known to the region's indigenous peoples
for thousands of years. People from the Eastern Woodlands cultures
explored at least three levels of the caves and used
shells to scrape and collect minerals from the walls. The
caves were also used as a burial site, and human
remains and funerary items have been found in Mammoth Cave
and other caves in the region. Descendants of the first

(04:17):
people to explore Mammoth Cave include the Cherokee, the Shawnee,
and Chickasaw, who were forcibly removed from this area in
the nineteenth century. In more recent years, the National Park
Service has worked with indigenous nations that have ancestral connections
to these caves to move bodies that used to be
on public display to parts of the cave that are

(04:37):
inaccessible to the public. There are also a lot of
cultural and religious objects still in the cave, and the
National Park Service asks visitors who find such objects to
leave them alone, but to document their location with a
photo that shows nearby landmarks, and also to tell a
park ranger, but not to post that photo on social media.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
The first Europeans to see Mammoth Cave arrived in the
area at the end of the eighteenth century, although there
are varying accounts about exactly who that was and exactly when.
The caves are referenced in a land certificate for two
hundred acres that was issued to Valentine Simmons on September fourth,

(05:20):
seventeen ninety eight. Based on this certificate, by then, settlers
knew that this cave system was a source of saltpeter
that's mentioned in that document.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
In the early nineteenth.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Century, Mammoth Cave became a major source of saltpeter, which
was mined primarily by enslaved men and was used to
make gunpowder. This saltpeter mining operation peaked during the War
of eighteen twelve, and the land encompassing the cave entrance
really dropped in value pretty dramatically once the war was

(05:54):
over and the demand for saltpeter fell off. The term
Mammoth Cave first appeared in writing in a Virginia newspaper
in eighteen ten, and that was also about the time
that visitors to the Cave started publishing accounts of what
they experienced there. This was during the Romantic period, in
which literature, culture, and art had a big focus on

(06:14):
things like natural beauty, sublimity, and emotion. An enormous cave
system full of wonders, much of its seemingly undiscovered, fit
right in with that mindset. The first formal tour of
Mammoth Cave probably took place in eighteen sixteen, and over
the decades that followed, this land passed through a series

(06:35):
of owners who either ran the cave as a tourist
attraction or leased it out to other people to do
the same. One of these owners was Franklin Goren, who
bought the property for five thousand dollars in eighteen thirty eight.
Goren enslaved a seventeen year old boy named Stephen Bishop,
who worked for Goren exploring and leading tours of the cave.

(06:58):
Gorean also in Bishop's mother and brother, and he leased
other men from there enslavers to work as cave guides
as well. About a year later, Goren sold the cave
and Bishop to doctor John Kron for ten thousand dollars.
Kron started building up Mammoth Cave as an attraction, things

(07:19):
like expanding a hotel that had already been built there,
connecting it to roads in the area, and laying a
pipe to a nearby spring to provide fresh water. He
purchased additional land, eventually totaling more than sixteen hundred acres
over time. He also hosted writers, artists, and performers at
the cave, including people like poet and essays Ralph Waldo

(07:41):
Emerson and opera singer Jenny Lynde. There were rumors that
saltpeter miners in the cave back when that was a thing,
had never experienced illness while working there, and from eighteen
forty two to eighteen forty three Kron tried to see
if the air in the cave could cure tuberculosis. He
had huts built inside the cave to house patients, and

(08:04):
thirteen people were meant to stay there for a year.
But while sea air, mountain air, and other varieties of
air were all attempted as tuberculosis treatments in the nineteenth century,
tuberculosis is really a bacterial infection, and this effort ended
early after three of the patients died.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
During this time, Stephen Bishop continued to work as a
cave guide. He explored deeper and deeper into Mammoth Cave,
developing an extensive knowledge of the system. His efforts sound grueling, terrifying, dangerous,
or all three like. He lay a ladder across a
very deep cavern called the Bottomless Pit, which was so

(08:47):
deep that torches would disappear before they hit the bottom,
so he could crawl over to the other side and
explore what was beyond it. At one point he made
his way through an underground riverbed filled with silt, going
through tighter and tighter spaces until it finally opened out
into what he named Great Relief Hall. He found underground

(09:07):
rivers and built boats to explore them, and at various
points rescued lost or injured visitors. People traveled from all
around not just to tour Mammoth Cave, but to tour
it specifically with Stephen Bishop as their guide. In eighteen
forty two, Bishop drew a map of the cave system
from memory, which was then published in the book Rambles

(09:29):
in the Mammoth Cave during the year eighteen forty four
by a visitor by Andrew Clark bullet. In the book,
the map was credited to Steven Bishop, one of the guides.
This book was the first travel guide for the cave,
and Bishop's map remained in use for at least four decades.
We're going to read a hilarious and only somewhat factual

(09:51):
list of interesting facts from the beginning of the book
before we take a quick break. One accidents of no
kind have ever recurred in the Mammoth Cave. Two Visitors
going in or coming out of the cave are not
liable to contract colds. On the contrary, colds are commonly
relieved by a visit in the cave. Three No impure

(10:14):
air exists in any part of the cave. Four reptiles
of no description have ever been seen in the cave.
On the contrary, they as well as quadrupeds, avoid it.
Five Combustion is perfect in all parts of the cave.
Six Decomposition and consequent putrefaction are unobservable in all parts

(10:35):
of the cave. Seven the water of the cave is
of the purest kind, and besides fresh water, there are
one or two sulfur springs. Eight. There are two hundred
and twenty six avenues in the cave, forty seven domes,
eight cataracts, and twenty three pits nine. The temperature of
the cave is fifty nine degrees fahrenheit and remains so

(10:59):
uniformly during summer ten. No sound, not even the loudest
peal of thunder, is heard one quarter of a mile
in the cave.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
When I read those interesting facts in the book, they
made me laugh. Next, we'll get to a development that
changed Mammoth Cave significantly and ultimately led to the Cave Wars.
We'll do that after a quick sponsor break. Doctor John

(11:32):
Kron died in eighteen forty nine, perhaps unsurprisingly of tuberculosis.
He had no children, and Mammoth Cave was placed in trust,
with nine nieces and nephews forming the Trustees of the
Mammoth Cave Estate. The trustees continued to control Mammoth Cave
until it eventually became part of the National Park. Under

(11:55):
the terms of Kron's will, the people he enslaved would
be freed seven years after his death. There are several
reports that Stephen Bishop was planning to move to Liberia
with his wife Catherine and their son Thomas once he
was freed. In eighteen fifty six, Bishop bought some land
and sold it at a prophet which may have been
meant to pay their way to Liberia, but then he

(12:17):
died in eighteen fifty seven at the age of thirty seven,
and we do not know what the cause of his
death was. He was buried at what's now known as
the Old Guide Cemetery, which is also the burial place
of the patients who died during the tuberculosis experiment. Stephen's son, Thomas,
is believed to have also died at a young age
because he vanishes from the historical record, but Charlotte later

(12:41):
married another Mammoth Cave guide named Nicholas Bransford. Bransford purchased
his own freedom in eighteen sixty three. Members of the
Bransford family, whose surname is that of their enslaver and
in some cases also their ancestor, worked as guides at
Mammoth Cave for generations while enslaved and as freeman in

(13:01):
so much of the work of exploring and mapping of
Mammoth Cave in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was
carried out by enslaved and free black men. Two years
after Bishop's death, the completion of the Louisville and Nashville
Railroad made it much easier for people from outside the
area to get to Mammoth Cave before people nearby could

(13:23):
walk or maybe ride a horse, but if they lived
farther away, the primary mode of transportation was by carriage
or stagecoach, and that was both difficult and expensive. The
railroad was faster, cheaper, and a lot more comfortable. Eventually,
the Mammoth Cave Railroad Company built a spur to take
people from the Louisville and Nashville Line or the LNN

(13:46):
directly to the hotel. There was a drop in tourism
at Mammoth Cave during the US Civil War, although we
know that both United States and Confederate soldiers visited the caves.
They signed their names on the walls using pencils in
rocks and knives, or by smoking the letters with candle flames.
Soldiers were also not at all the only people to

(14:07):
write their names on the walls of the caves. A
lot of other visitors did as well, and so did guides.
There is one cave full of gypsum formations that look
like flowers, which Stephen Bishop named Charlotte's Grotto, and it
is one of the many places his name appears in
the caves. In Charlotte's grotto, he drew a heart and
he wrote Stephen Bishop, m Cave Guide, Missus Charlotte Bishop

(14:31):
eighteen forty three. Nearby he also wrote, Missus Charlotte Bishop,
Flower of Mammoth Cave. Those gypsum formations are so cool looking.
Travel to Mammoth Cave got even easier in the early
twentieth century when automobiles started to become more widely available.

(14:51):
People could drive to southern Kentucky on their own schedule
and then explore the area on their own, rather than
relying on a train schedule and then trying to figure
out transportation once they got to where they were going.
And this, along with a construction of more roads and
highways in the area directly fed into the cave wars.

(15:11):
Mammoth Cave was a huge draw, but this part of
Kentucky is full of other caves. Aside from the tourism
driven mostly by Mammoth Cave. The way most people supported
themselves was through farming, but the soil and climate meant
that this was difficult and mostly on a subsistence level.
Finding something you could turn into a show cave on

(15:32):
your own farmland or on land that you could buy
or negotiate permission to be on meant another easier, potentially
much more lucrative way to make a living, but this
also came with its own difficulties. Even if the cave
on your land was truly beautiful and interesting, you wouldn't
get many visitors if it was way out of the

(15:54):
way or hard to get to. Plus, Mammoth Cave had
such an established name that it was hard to compete with,
so as people looked for other caves, they were hoping
to find one that was connected to the Mammoth Cave
system so that they could conduct their own Mammoth Cave tours.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
George Morrison was one of the people who tried to
do this. He had arrived in the area in nineteen
fifteen and was initially looking for oil. When that didn't
work out, he decided to get into the cave business.
He bribed one of the workers at Mammoth Cave for
their keys so he could get in on his own
and explore and try to figure out where he might

(16:32):
make an entrance from the surface. He was eventually caught
doing this and banned from returning. That did not stop him, though,
and eventually he found a place that he thought he
could blast into from the surface through a sinkhole on
land owned by a man named Perry Cox. This did
get him into Mammoth Cave, which he confirmed by finding

(16:52):
the signatures of Mammoth Cave guides on the walls, but
it turned out that the rights to this part of
the system were owned by la In Railroad. This was
a temporary setback, though. In nineteen twenty one, Morrison bought
two thousand acres of land that did not have those
rights issues with the railroad and again blasted his way

(17:13):
through a sinkhole. Once again, he found signatures left by
guides who would have come in from the original Mammoth
Cave entrance. By nineteen twenty two, he was advertising this
as the new entrance to Mammoth Cave, and he built
a hotel on his land as well. On March fourteenth,
nineteen twenty three, some of Morrison's guides found a flow

(17:35):
stone formation that would become known as Frozen Niagara. It
looked kind of like Niagara Falls, frozen over in the wintertime.
Frozen Niagara wasn't something you could get to on the
tours from the other Mammoth Cave entrance, so this became
a big focus of Morrison's advertising. Unsurprisingly, Morrison's creation of

(17:56):
a new Mammoth Cave brought him into conflict with the
Mammoth Cave as State, and they wound up in court
over in in nineteen twenty six, a judge ordered Morrison
to add a disclaimer to all of his advertising materials, stating, quote,
we do not show any of that part of the cave,
which prior to nineteen oh seven was generally known to
the public as Mammoth Cave. That portion of the cave

(18:18):
can only be seen through the old entrance. But a
year later Morrison was found in contempt for not doing that.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
The Kentucky cave weres also went way beyond the dispute
between Mammoth Cave Estate and George Morrison's New Mammoth Cave.
By the nineteen twenties, more than twenty caves had opened
for visitors in the area, and their owners and their
managers went to great lengths to try to bring in
as much business as possible. There were so many road signs,

(18:50):
a lot of them intentionally deceptive and confusing. They would
kind of mention Mammoth Cave, but they would really direct
visitors somewhere else, or they would promise that if you
just followed the sign you would get some quote genuine
visitor information. Cave operators hired people who became known as

(19:10):
cave cappers, possibly for the caps that a lot of
them wore. Cave cappers waited by the roads and handed
out so called official literature and gave people directions to
their cave rather than one of the Mammoth Cave entrances.
They'd hop onto the running board of the car, trying
to get to newcomers before anybody else and convince them

(19:31):
of where they needed to go. Or maybe they'd tell
people that there had been a collapse or a disease
outbreak or some other calamity at Mammoth Cave, but don't worry.
They know another cave this is just as good. And
then there was the vandalism and the violence, like digging
up one another's access roads and destroying other cave operators signs,

(19:54):
or covering up somebody else's billboard with your billboard, even
vandalizing the cave's themselves. On July eighth, nineteen twenty one,
the Owensboro, Kentucky Inquirer reported from Cave City, saying that
lem Ferguson, who worked at Mammoth Cave, had shot Clell Lee,
who worked at a Great Onyx Cave, in the back

(20:16):
during an argument. This paper described these two men as
in the taxicab business, which might have been a reference
to their driving visitors to each of these caves. There
are still plenty of places in Mammoth Cave area, and
really anywhere in the world that draws a lot of
tourists that advertise visitor information or other services but turn

(20:37):
out to be kind of shady at best. But the
situation in south central Kentucky in the early twentieth century
was extreme. And that's where we get to the story
of Floyd Collins, which we're going to talk about after
a sponsor break. William Floyd Collins, who went by Floyd,

(21:03):
was born in Kentucky on June twentieth, eighteen eighty seven.
Starting in his childhood, he explored the land that was
part of his family's farm and other farms in the area.
He found cave entrances and figured out what was beyond.
In nineteen seventeen, the Collins family started operating Great Crystal
Cave on their property as a show cave, but this

(21:26):
was really too far away from anything else to get.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
A lot of visitors.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
The Collinses took some of the same steps as other
cave operators to try to attract business. Among other things,
Floyd's brother, Andy Lee Collins, was charged with paying somebody
to burn down a competitor's signs. But one of their neighbors,
Beasley Doyle, had another cave known as Sand Cave, which
was just off Cave City Road, and it was in

(21:52):
a great location, a spot that people would pass by
on the way to Mammoth Cave. Collins made an agreement
with Day, getting permission to explore the cave and construct
an entrance, with the two of them splitting the profits
if it all worked out. On January thirtieth, nineteen twenty five,
Collins was working his way through the cave, trying to

(22:14):
find places that would be good for visitors, and he
said he found a spot on the other side of
several extremely narrow passages where the cave opened up into
something much larger, But his lantern started to falter and
he decided he needed to turn back. We haven't mentioned
this yet, but while the first battery operated flashlights and

(22:37):
headlamps and things like that were invented at the end
of the nineteenth century. Most of the exploration in these
caves was being done with things like torches or candles
or kerosene lanterns, And if your light went out, especially
if you were deep at all within the cave, you
could wind up absolutely disoriented, in complete darkness, absolute like

(23:00):
there's no daylight coming in from anywhere at all. Right,
you're your eyes can't adjust because there's nothing for them,
nothing you couldjust too right, Yeah. With his light fading,
Collins tried to hurry back to the surface. He was
moving through a very narrow passageway, lying on his back,
pushing himself inch by inch with his toes when he

(23:21):
knocked his lantern over. I'm stressed just reading this. As
he kept trying to push himself along in the dark,
he accidentally dislodged a stone weighing about twenty seven pounds
that's roughly twelve kilograms, which pinned his ankle.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
This was at a really awkward angle to try to
get free, and as he tried to dislodge that stone,
more rock crumbled and fell down around him.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
The next day, people realized that Collins hadn't come home,
and somebody went out to sand cave to look for him.
They found his coat hanging outside. A boy named Jule Estes,
who was seventeen, was the only person around who was
small enough to get through these very narrow spaces in
the cave, and he was able to get in, reached

(24:08):
Collins and learn that he was trapped. This spawned a
huge rescue effort and a massive news story, attracting crowds
of onlookers in what was eventually described as a carnival atmosphere.
Crowds grew from hundreds to thousands of people, with local
setting up stands to sell refreshments and souvenirs. A remote

(24:30):
radio station was set up on site, and Charles Lindberg,
not yet a famous pilot, was one of the people
on hand to fly photographs from the scene to newspapers
in Chicago. Locally, one of the reporters was William Burke Miller,
known as Skeets because people said he was no bigger
than a mosquito, and he worked for the Louisville Courier Journal.

(24:51):
Miller's small stature meant he could squeeze into the cave
and interview Collins directly, and he earned a Pulitzer Prize
for his reporting. On February second, eight members of the
Kentucky National Guard were deployed under the command of two
lieutenants to try to excavate the area where Collins was trapped.
These men were chosen because they were the smallest ones

(25:13):
in their unit. More members of the National Guard came later,
both to try to help with the rescue and to
try to maintain order among all the spectators and the rescuers,
who were often arguing what the best course of action
would be to try to rescue Collins. For a while,
people were able to get to Collins and deliver food

(25:35):
and water. Electric lights were strung into the cave connected
to a generator, both to provide light for rescue and
to provide a little bit of warmth in the very
chilly cave. Rescuers tried to pull Collins out using a harness,
but that didn't work. They managed to get a lot
of the rubble cleared away from him, but he.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Was still stuck.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Then the weather became very wet, and on Wednesday, February fourth,
part of the cave's ceiling collapsed, blocking off access to
where Collins was trapped. Afterward, one of the National guardsmen
was assigned to Floyd's brother, Homer, to try to keep
him from going into the cave. They were afraid that
he would either get in the way of rescue efforts

(26:18):
or become trapped himself, and at that point it was
not possible to reach his brother that way. There wasn't
anything he could do. By February sixth, so a week
after Collins had become trapped, rescuers abandoned the original entrance
to sand Cave and started trying to dig a new
shaft to get to him. Diggers worked around the clock,

(26:38):
and a field hospital was set up to treat minor injuries.
The National Red Cross also arrived to feed the rescuers.
By the seventh there were fifty members of the National
Guard trying to maintain order, and both Homer Collins and
Floyd's caving buddy Johnny Gerald had been banned from the
scene after repeated arguments about the best plan for saving him.

(27:00):
The crowds of spectators were not the only thing that
was out of control. This had become the biggest news
story in the United States, and the number of reporters
continued to swell with journalists arriving from almost every state.
Some of their reporting was heavily sensationalized, with a big

(27:20):
focus on the disagreements among the rescuers, of which there
legitimately were a lot, also accusations that the rescuers were
not doing enough to get Collins out of the cave.
But some of the reporting was also just false, either
reporting on rumors that weren't true or printing stories that

(27:40):
were just made up. Because of the ongoing atmosphere of
deception and trickery that had long been part of the
Cave Wars, there were people who thought this whole thing
was some kind of publicity stunt, and that Collins was
either hiding somewhere outside the cave completely fine, or that
he was already dead. After the Associated Tress reported on

(28:00):
the rumors, a military Court of Inquiry was convened at
Sand Cave to investigate these allegations. The court ruled that
Collins was in the cave on February fourteenth. In my opinion,
this was a colossal waste of time and effort.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
By that point.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
By February fourteenth, though, Collins had probably died while rescuers
had not been able to get to him. They had
been able to hear him, and they had been able
to hear him coughing as of the thirteenth, but that
was really the last that anybody heard from him. A
fifty five foot rescue shaft finally broke through to where

(28:39):
he was on February sixteenth, and his body was found
at three forty two pm. Doctors who examined the body
gave differing estimates for when they thought he had died,
but he had probably survived trapped in the cave for
a little more than two weeks. Initially, Collins's family didn't

(28:59):
want his body removed, and a funeral was held at
the mouth of Sand Cave with about five hundred people
in attendance. Then their rescue shaft was sealed off. The
cave was reopened on April twenty third, nineteen twenty five,
and Collins's body was removed, embalmed, and buried on the
Crystal Cave property. The Collins family later sold Crystal Cave

(29:21):
to doctor Harry Thomas, who exhumed the body, put it
in a glass topped coffin, and used it as a
tourist attraction. Collins's body was stolen two different times in
the late nineteen twenties. The story of Floyd Collins and
his attempted rescue were later turned into a number of novels,
a musical, and a movie.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
And this whole thing.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Also became part of a big push to turn the
Mammoth Cave area into a national park, something that would
at least ideally bring an end to the kind of
destruction and trickery and risk that had been part of
the cave wars. Tmouth Cave National Park Association formed in
nineteen twenty four, and Congress approved the establishment of the

(30:07):
national park on May twenty fifth, nineteen twenty six. Actually
creating this park was a long process, though The Mammoth
Cave National Park Association bought the Mammoth Cave estate property
from John Cron's heirs and donated it to the federal government.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
The L and N. Railroad had also bought up a
lot of cave rights in the area, controlling them as
a subsidiary called Colossal Cavern Company. The railroad donated these
rights as well. George Morrison tried to put off selling
his new entrance to Mammoth Cave, but he did ultimately
do so for two hundred ninety thousand dollars in nineteen

(30:45):
thirty two.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
But beyond these big land purchases and donations, the process
of turning this area into a national park required the
acquisition of more than forty five thousand acres from roughly
six hundred landowners. Some of these people willingly sold their land,
but others refused. The Kentucky National Park Commission, established in

(31:07):
nineteen twenty eight, was endowed with the power of eminent domain,
allowing it to condemn property that people did not want
to sell. Over the course of acquiring the land for
the National Park, more than two thousand people were displaced,
and a lot of people thought the compensation they received
was not enough and wouldn't allow them to start over

(31:30):
somewhere else. This was all particularly difficult for black residents
of the area, who faced racism both from community members
and under the law when they tried to move somewhere
else after being displaced from their land around Mammoth Cave.
As this was going on, cave operators from outside the
future parkland were still caught up in competition and infighting.

(31:55):
Many caves in the area were increasingly damaged, both through
operators vandalizing way another's property and mining out pieces of
cave formations to sell as souvenirs. Cases were also still
making their way through the courts in connection to all
of this, like Edwards versus Sims in nineteen twenty eight,
which was between LP Sims, who was operating Great Onyx

(32:17):
Cave and FP Lee, who thought some of this cave
was under property he owned. The Kentucky Court of Appeals
ultimately ruled that the owner of the land above it
owned the cave, even if the entrance to that part
of the cave was not on their land. In nineteen
thirty three, the Civilian Conservation Corps arrived in the area

(32:37):
to construct facilities that would be needed for this land
to become Mammoth Cave National Park. The Civilian Conservation Corps
was a new deal, aarrow work relief program meant to
help the United States recover from the Great Depression while
also improving public lands and parks. The Civilian Conservation Corps
work at Mammoth Cave went on until nineteen forty two.

(33:01):
The CCC was racially segregated, and the work at Mammoth
Cave included CCC Camp five ten, one of Kentucky's three
Black CCC units, whose members included descendants of the Bransford family,
some of whom had lost their land through eminent domain proceedings. Initially,
all of the CCC units at Mammoth Cave were housed

(33:22):
at a former country club that had been abandoned for
years and had become kind of run down and sad,
but the black workers faced ongoing racism and harassment from
the white workers. Eventually, the white workers were moved to
other campsites in the park, while the black workers were
left at this former country club that people found really

(33:45):
just not a great place. Over time, though the Core
remodeled and revitalized this former country club. They turned it
into a CCC camp that was described as very respectable.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
And quite modern. The CCC's efforts at Mammoth Cave included
work in the caves and on the land above it.
They worked on reforesting the land that had been used
as farmland, and also built roads, trails, campgrounds, and other
park facilities. They also acted as firefighters, and Camp five
ten reportedly spotted and fought more than half the fires

(34:18):
at Mammoth Cave during their time there.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
Mammoth Cave National Park was dedicated on July fet nineteen
forty one. Although many of the caves that connected to
the Mammoth Flint Cave system are now part of the park,
there were still multiple other show caves operating in the
area after the national park opened. Intense competition among these
caves continued for about another two decades, and at that

(34:44):
point most of the owners started trying to work with
each other in a more collaborative way. According to a
local news article from twenty twenty one, there are still
eight privately owned show caves in the area. However, even
though the Cave Wars ended, you can also still find

(35:05):
signs that maybe reference Mammoth Cave but direct you to
a more out of the way souvenir shop or something similar,
rather than to the actual national park.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Crystal Cave was one of the caves that became part
of Mammoth Cave National Park, and the National Park Service
cut off public access to Floyd Collins's coffin in nineteen
eighty nine. Members of the Collins family asked for him
to be respectfully buried, and now he is buried at
Mammoth Cave Baptist Church. And that's the Cave Wars. Do

(35:37):
you have some listener mail?

Speaker 2 (35:38):
I do I do it actually maybe has a little
bit to do with geology, kind of like today. This
is from Vicky, and Vicky wrote about the Lackey Fisser
eruption episode. Vicky wrote, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I just
listened to your recent episodes on the Lackey Fisser and
then the behind the scenes for that episode. I'm a
longtime listener and recently came back from a week long

(36:01):
vacation in Iceland. I too share your appreciation for Iceland.
It's truly spectacular. There was so much information to take
in on my trip, and unfortunately I may have missed
some important pieces of history and facts that my guide
shared with the group over the week, including perhaps the
Locky Fisher. So I had a chuckle when, after halfway

(36:21):
through most of the episode on the Locky Fisher, I
realized that Kirkie Byer Cloister was in fact one of
the towns I stayed in. Shout out to the Magma
Hotel and that there is a shortened name for this
hard to pronounce town, Cloister, So thank you for that.
I really struggled with even attempting to pronounce the names
of the town's waterfalls and geysers that I visited while there.

(36:44):
I could also relate when Tracy mentioned how hard it
is to pronounce Icelandic words, even after much practice. Before
my trip, I tried to learn some basic Icelandic phrases,
but ultimately didn't feel super confident about even attempting to
say simple greetings and I Land, despite all the practice
I did for the many months leading up to my trip.

(37:04):
I hope you'll consider doing future episodes regarding Iceland and
in particular the folklore and traditions Tracy. I also want
to mention I was super excited when you mentioned the
town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts in a recent behind the scenes
I live in northeast Massachusetts, and during the pandemic, once
restrictions had been lifted, I actually took a many vacation
to the Berkshires and state a couple of nights in Pittsfield.

(37:27):
Vicky goes on to ask when we will be announcing
our next podcast trip and sends pictures of a sweet
cat called Abby, who Vicky lost about a year ago,
and a picture of a cat mural from downtown Reykievic. Yeah,
this cat mural from downtown Reykivic is fabulous.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
You accidentally have stumbled upon a thing I wanted to
ask you about which I'll do and behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
Okay, okay, so yeah, thank you so much Vicky for
these pictures. We have not announced our next podcast trip.
We have in fact, not talked about what is happening next,
for when or anything like that. I think we've been
kind of just focus on the next thing, which is Iceland,

(38:16):
and not the thing after that. So thank you so
much Vicky for this email. If you would like to
send us some notes about this or any other podcast
or at history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com, and you
can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and
wherever I'll do you like to get your podcasts. Stuff

(38:41):
you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Tracy V. Wilson

Holly Frey

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