August 25, 2025 • 62 mins
This week, we discuss Mammoth Cave - the longest cave system on the planet and the site of an ill-fated tuberculosis hospital.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to An Hour of Our Time, the podcast where
we pick a topic, research it, and come back to
tell you what we've learned. Today, we're going to talk
about Mammoth Cave, the longest cave system in the world,
United States National Park, and an Hour of Our Time
podcast Vacation Destination.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm Joe and I'm Dave.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Well Mar.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yeah, what are you opening?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Sac a Tuck Green Company Bonfire Brown. I was going
to get a like Kentucky yeah themed beer, but this
is from Michigan. I didn't have time to go to this.
Actually I would have had time, but I just like
completely I was very tired, and I completely went on
autopilot when I was coming home from work and I
just like went straight to uh straight to straight to
(01:05):
my house.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Uh sure this will do, this will do. Yeah. Well Joe,
why why were you, you know, thinking maybe something from Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Well, uh, we you know, I try to avoid talking
about Kentucky.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Uh just just in general, a general rule of thumb.
I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
My family is actually from Kentucky, but we're not talking
about necessarily Kentucky the state. We are talking about very
specific thing. Kentucky one of the probably most famous landmarks.
We were talking about Mammoth Cave.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, have you been to Mammoth Cave? Joe?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Well, so this is you know, I really did the
work for this one. So well, we talked about we
talked about what we knew about Mammoth Cave before we
started studying for this. So, Dave, did you know anything
about Mammoth Cave before this?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Not really. I knew that it was the longest cave
system in the world, but that was about it. I
knew it was in Kentucky. I've never been there, yeah,
so that was about all I could say about it. Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I knew about it, but I didn't but I had
never been and actually, uh, to study for this, I
did actually go to Mammoth Cave. Of course, we we
decided that we were going to do uh, Mammoth Cave
(02:36):
after I had already like you know, decided that I
was going to go there. But it is true that
I went to Mammoth Cave for the podcast or to
study for the podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
So yeah, I have actually not too long ago, right.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, we went just to well a couple of weeks
ago recording this and gaining of August, and I went
there like, uh, you know, late July, we drove down
with family vacation. We didn't want to drive the whole
way to the Smoking Mountains in Tennessee all all one
(03:17):
piece with our small children in the car, so we
decided to break it up. And also we really you know,
like I said, we wanted to see a Manth Cave.
So we drove down there, visited Mammoth Cave, spent like good,
like a whole day there really sure in between between,
like you know, afternoon of one day and morning of
(03:38):
the next, headed out and went to the Smoking Mountains,
which I don't know, maybe we could do a we
was do an episode about mountains sometime. But you've never
been to Manth Cave, Dave, I have never been. Okay,
well we'll talk about let's talk about what it is
and then I will try to convince you to go.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Okay, Well, I mean you wanted to convince me very hard.
I just happened to have never been.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
But yeah, it's one of those things where like I
wish that I would have gone sooner, and I can't
wait to go again. It was like really cool. I
like doing like you know, outdoor shit. I guess this
is kind of outdoors because you're inside and well, yeah,
and it's always fifty four degrees inside the cave. It's
like air conditioning. And it was hot as fuck when
(04:25):
we were there, so it felt really nice being inside
the cave. In fact, I think I was like getting
heat exhaustion before we went into the cave on the
tour that we went on. And it's like really good
that I got inside the cave because I was like,
I was feeling bad.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So what is Mayoth Caves. Mayoth Cave is It is
a cave system. It is also a national park in
the United States in the state of Kentucky. It's in
south central Kentucky. So it is famous for being not
only the longest cave in the United States, it's actually
the longest cave system in the world, which is really cool.
(05:06):
And in fact, it's what I said, I said that,
oh yeah, yeah, right, well yeah, I'm I'm just kind
of like emphasizing, Oh, okay, it's really cool because to
describe like how big it is, it's like fully one
and a half times longer than the next largest cave
(05:27):
or in the next longest cave system, which is uh
Sock Octoon, which is in Mexico. The thing about sock
Octoon is it's like the thing that makes man with
Cave like really cool is that it is very easy
to visit. Some of these other cave systems, like Sockoctoon
in the Yucatan of Mexico, it's pretty hard to visit
(05:50):
because it is underwater.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Uh yeah, I would, I'd go ahead and say that
that adds a level of complexity to visiting it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
So, so it's not gonna be something that like your
average you know, family is going to go explore. But
but Mam Cave is certainly easy to do, especially if
you go on like you know, kind of some of
the easier like entrances. But yeah, so just some some
more basic facts. It is. The park is located on
(06:23):
about fifty two thousand acres, which is mostly in Edmondson
Edmundson County, but the cave sofa can be that this
actually like extends into like neighboring counties.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
The the river that flows are are the river that
runs through the park like on the surface and it's
partly involved in the creation of the cave, which we'll
kind of talk about is called the Green River, which
at one point was a really important like river you know, highway.
(07:06):
The cave is formally formally called the Mammoth flint Ridge
Cave System because in nineteen seventy two they actually discovered
that Mammoth Cave connects to another cave system called the
flint Ridge Cave System. People still call it Mammoth Cave
because that's that's the famous thing, famous name. It was
(07:32):
a we kind of talked about this a little bit
later far as far as like I know, Dave, you
looked at some of like the kind of like more
historical elements of it. But it was established as a
National park in nineteen forty one, which is actually like
it's one of the early national parks.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, And there was like a but prior to it
becoming a national park, there was a lot of like
I don't know, legal battles and stuff about like who
owned the cave and who owned like different parts of it,
and it was unclear like where you know, certain people's
claims ended in other people's claims began and things like that.
It was named a World Heritage Site in nineteen eighty one.
(08:18):
Uh and it is also was named an International Dark
Sky Park in twenty twenty one. So another cool thing
about it, well, this is these dark sky park is
places where there's very little light pollution.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Oh okay, cool.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So another cool thing about it is that you can
see like a shit a ton of stars when you're there.
I actually like could see more stars and things there
than when we were in the Smoky Mountains because the
smoke where we were in the Smoking Mountains was we
were so close to the fucking eyesore known as Gallenburg
(08:59):
and the other or I sore known as Pigeon Forge.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Just just kidding.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
They were fun, but they were like a lot of
light pollution because it's like imagine like Vegas in the Appalachians.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Oh, that is quite a description.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, that's I think that's an apt description if you've
ever been there.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
So anyway, so I'm reinly going to talk about the
like how the cave was formed, some of the interesting
like geology and actually paleontology, which is like kind of
why I wanted to go there. But sure I really
didn't see like, uh, I didn't really see that many fossils.
Well I did see some, And then I think, Dave,
(09:39):
you're going to talk about some of the like more
kind of like human history stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah. Absolutely, and then and then at.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Towards the end, I think I'm going to talk about
like what it's what it's like to go visit there,
if you like went to visit there today, including like
my own experience, because it was fucking wild.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Okay, So.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
This is a this is a great example of a
limestone cave, and it's just notable. It's sort of like
a kind of standard cave, like this is kind of
how a lot of caves form. It just happens to
be so large. So it is a limestone cave. So
(10:23):
the rocks that it are formed in our Mississippian age.
So if you're sort of familiar with the geologic time skilled,
the Mississippian is one of the two portions of what
we used to call the Carboniferous or sometimes it's still
(10:43):
called the Carboniferous, and it would be the first part
of the carbonifer So now that's often you'll see that
split into the Mississippian and the Pennsylvanian. But basically this
would be from about three hundred and in fifteen nine
to about three d and twenty three million years ago.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
We do have.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Mississippian. We do have Mississippian age rocks. Here in Ohio
they're more but although they're not they're not here in
this part of the state where Dave and I live,
kind of like the central part, gotcha. But that's like
that's where all like, that's what all the the coal
is from in this country.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Hence the name the carboniferous. That's got a lot of
carbon and that. So why is this important? So it's
it's limestone is what those rocks are. And limestone is
a sedimentary rock, which is mainly it's it's basically mainly
made from the bodies of like extinct of extinct orders
(11:58):
or not extinct orders, but like fall organisms or at
least it contains a lot of fossils of extinct orgism.
So mainly we get fossils of like hard bodied things
when you think of like bones and teeth, but also
(12:21):
like shells. So there's two forms of calcium carbonate. Uh,
there's calcite and aragonite in different kinds of organisms like clams,
nails and other things that you may not have heard of,
make their shells out of this calcium carbonate. When they die,
(12:42):
you know, they sink to the bottom and then become
incorporated into this limestone. But limestone is also a dissolved
by acid, which is very relevant in the moment. But
what makes what makes Mammoth Cave unique is that sitting
(13:03):
on top of that limestone there is a cap of sandstone.
So it's called the big clifty sandstone. And I think
they've I'd be very familiar with sandstone. I guess I
didn't ask if you're familiar with.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Limestone, limestone more than sandstone. Well, what is sandstone made of?
Speaker 1 (13:29):
You think, I'm guessing sand Yep, it's it's essentially compressed
lithified sand. The thing about sandstone is that it does
not dissolve in acid. So you have this limestone bedrock,
and then they's capped with sandstone. So and there are
(13:55):
like it's a little bit more complicated than that. I mean,
there are like kind of like some layers of limes
stone sort of interspersed with sandstone, kind of sandwich between.
But for the most part, I think of like a
block of limestone with the sandstone on top. Okay, so
now why is this important? So the way that the
cave formed is you have ground water percolates through cracks
(14:21):
in the sandstone cap rock and filters down into the
limestone the rain water that then becomes the groundwater. It's
slightly acidic because of dissolved carbon dioxide. When the carbon
dioxide is dissolved in water, it becomes carbonic acid. So
(14:45):
if you're drinking something like carbonated water, that's why I like,
carbonated water is acidic, and it's a very very weak acid.
It's like far far weaker than like, you know, like
if you're drinking like a soda.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Or probably citric acid. Far far less, far weaker than
citric acid.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
It's far weaker than that. It's just weaker than like
you need this beer that I'm drinking, or even like
a you know, like a soda water. But it is
acidic enough that it eats through the limestone, but it
doesn't eat through the sandstone on top, so you get
eventually carves through the limestone and leaves this cap on top.
(15:29):
So it's really cool. Like my son even asked me,
like when we were inside the cave, like looking up
at the roof or the ceiling so to speak, he
was like, you know, Dad, is that like is that natural?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Like?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Because it looks so smooth and and it is it
looks like a ceiling. It's like in certain parts it's
like almost perfectly smooth. In other parts you'll see the
classic like stalactites, which are the ones that hang down,
the pointy things.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, So so that is essentially like how the cave
is formed. There's there's also a river that runs through
the cave, which is actually called the river sticks you
can actually yeah, well it's a it's a it's an
(16:23):
under underground river like through through hades, right, yeah, and
so it's uh, yeah, it's really cool, and uh, that's
essentially how it's formed. Now people have been you know,
looking or or visiting Mammoth Cave for quite a long time.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
I guess I should.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Back up a little step here to talk about some
of the paleontology. Because of the uh, because of the
makeup of the limestone, it was like part of an
ancient ocean. There are tons and tons of fossils. In fact,
(17:10):
they've found over forty species of fossil shark in Mammoth Cave.
And in fact, when I was there, the day I
was there, they actually announced a new species that they
had described.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
So well, that's a serendipitous for you. Yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
It's kind of strange to think about this. Well, Kentucky
is completely landlocked in the United States, and then you're
also like under ground. But again you have to remember
the limestone that this is made out of forms a
or was formed from the ancient sea bed. And in fact,
(17:52):
there's like many sections of the cave that I was
pointing out to my family where you could clearly see
like tons of tons of coral. So like, you know,
three and sixty million years ago, this would have been
a core Yeah, about three hundred and sixty million years ago,
(18:12):
this had been like a corel reef and actually kind
of like a more equatorial tropical environment kind of you
kind of think about like the Bahamas. If have ever
been in the Bahamas.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Dave, No, but I'm aware of what the weather's like.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Oh, even like South Florida, right, Oh yes, so like
that kind of blue like turquoise blue water. It's like,
you know, relatively shallow. Imagine imagine the area where we
are now and in Kentucky was like that. Of course,
later that was you know, uplifted with a mountain building
(18:52):
to form the Appalachians. But I digress or actually, no,
it wasn't after that. But so the the rocks that
the Appalachian Mountains are made out of actually quite a
lot older.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, the Appalation Mountains are like among the oldest mountain
ranges on the planet.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Right, Yes, they are extremely old. There's several different mountain
building events, but some of them are from actually around
just a little bit after. Are actually sort of like
during the time period that the rocks that make in
Mammoth Cave reformed, and then also some are like after.
(19:38):
So yeah, anyway, I digress. I shout to make sure
I didn't speak out of turn about the age of
the Appalachian Mountains. They are incredibly ancient.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Sure, yeah, all right, So.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Getting into like kind of the history. So, like I said,
people have there's documented human activity in Mammoth Cave. The
goes back at least five thousand years, so people have
been using this cave for a long time now.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
I think that.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
It's important to to note that, like we think about
like quote unquote cavemen or like just people like living
in caves. Usually people didn't like live in caves because
it's like kind of dark dark in caves and also
like animals tend to live in there. So people used
(20:32):
caves for for various different things like shelters and even
places for burials and things like that, but often people
did not live in the caves. But anyway, So there
are many sets of Native American remains found inside Mammoth
(20:54):
Cave and the other other like cave systems in the area, right,
and they do some of them seem to be intentional burial,
like they were placed there.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
And they're mummified because of the conditions within the cave.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yes, oh, sorry, so I didn't mention the kind of
the I was going to kind of talk a little
bit more about the weird like micro climate of the
cave later when I talk about like kind of my
experience of going there or like what it's like if
you go there.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
But sure, and that micro climate will be obviously relevant
to what I want to talk about.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Yeah, yeah, and yeah, I didn't want to step on
what you were talking about. But also, yeah, it just
so it's only fifty four degrees and and so, and
it's actually like parts of it are quite dry air. So, yes,
these remains were mummified, as you said, So, so people
(21:53):
started to like research some of the people that used
the cave. There are various different artifacts that have been found,
some of them and some replicas of them you can
actually like see on display. Now these remains are within
(22:13):
the caves are protected by a different like federal laws.
And also now there are issues with something called the
Graves Act, was actually like passed in the nineties but
is only now sort of going into effect, where it's
illegal to display Native American artifacts without permission from the tribe.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Essentially gotcha. But then if you skip.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Ahead in time to like written history, in seventeen ninety one,
there was one of the first surveys of the cave
by European It's called the Pollard Survey, where they were
(23:06):
surveying areas around the Green River. And the legend is
that the first Europeans to visit Mammoth Cave where either
John Houchin or his brother Francis Houchin. It's unclear whether,
like you know, it seems like people may have visited
it before that, but you know, supposedly Houchin they were
(23:32):
chasing a wounded bear to the cave's entrance near the
Green River, and I actually saw this. There's like an
area where you can see the river coming out or
the water coming out of the cave pretty close to
where it connects with the Green River. Okay, but it's
(23:57):
kind of unclear because.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
The uh.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
John Houchin was also named Johnny Dick.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Okay, but he was like apparently it was.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Apparently ten years old in seventeen ninety seven, so it's
like maybe unlikely they dose out hunting bears when he's
ten years old, although it was the late seventeen unders
in Kentucky, so who knows. Yeah, it is more likely
that his his father John was the one that found
(24:36):
the all right, It's more likely that he found the cave,
but I think most people think that it was Francis
Frank Houchin, brother of John Houchin. I feel like I
can't really like care that much about this, but.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
It feels like this is detail that I guess doesn't
really matter. Yeah, but anyway, which one of them it was,
you know.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
But roundabouts the seventeen nineties is when people Europeans I
should say, found the cave, right, So then people started
to kind of explore the cave. But it really kind
of a lot of this exploration that really got kicked
off at the beginning of the eighteen hundreds, especially with
(25:29):
the war of eighteen twelve.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Mm hmm, absolutely, and that is because the cave itself
because of the large population of bats and their depositing
of guano all over the cave. But that breaks down,
It breaks down into calcium nitrate, and that mineral can
(25:55):
be mixed with other potassium rich materials to create potassium
nitrate or saltpeter. If saltpeter is a main ingredient in
black gunpowder, which is obviously widely used the time, and
when the War of eighteen twelve breaks out, saltpeter is
in high demand, so the cave is mined extensively. They
(26:20):
would extract calcium nitrate by using water to basically filter
the cave dirt. They have these big vats of water
and then they would pump that calcium nitrate in water
solution back to the surface. And I say they, I
mean enslaved people would do this and then they would
(26:45):
combine it with again other potassium rich things like wood
ash or blood like ox blood, animal blood to make saltpeter.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Gross.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Yeah. The other interesting thing about this is that when
so these enslaved people that were mining it were also
the people who built many of the first trails inside
the cave as you would have to to get around.
And when the war ended and the demand for saltpeter
drastically fell, it became a tourist attraction. You have this
(27:17):
big cave, you have all of these trails, and that's
sort of how that happened.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
It was interesting though, like some of the artifacts from
that are actually like still in the cave because the
cave's climate kind of preserve preserves everything that's down there. Yeah,
there are relics going back to that time period. And
then also like all the subsequent you know, events inside
(27:48):
the cave.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Subsequent events you mean like a tuberculosis hospital.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yes, well, also like I don't know, Dave, did you
see any do you find thinking about the the the
mushroom growing that happened in the cave?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
No, I didn't see that.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Just various different people have used it for different things.
It kind of became like a tourist destination, like fairly
early on. But before you you should talk about what
you're going to talk about. But one thing that people
tried to do was there's a family who tried to
grow mushrooms. They had heard about the white mushrooms that
(28:28):
people have been cultivating for a long time in the
catacombs of Paris, and so they started growing mushrooms. They
had like gotten there, like you know kind of like
basically like raised beds kind of things, and you could
see them still down there to grow mushrooms. Just before
they were about to harvest their crops, someone poured machine
(28:50):
oil on the mushroom beds, destroying them and ruined rude
their fledgling mushroom business. But you like said, you could
still see like all that kind of quote unquote junk
that's down there. So they're very careful to tell you
like basically like if you see anything that looks like
maybe it's like trash, like don't pick it up because
(29:13):
it might actually be historical. But also like they're very
stringent about like do not throw any trash in the cave.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
So yeah, so it's been used for various other things,
like you said, like as a tuberculous hospital.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah so, I mean, like you said, it was sort
of rediscovered by Europeans in the seventeen nineties, and by
the late you know, you know, right after the War
of eighteen twelve eighteen fifteen or so, it starts to
become a tourist attraction and in eighteen thirty nine. In
October of eighteen thirty nine, a doctor from Kentucky named
(29:58):
John Crogan. He purchases around two thousand acres near the
Green River and that included the land under which Mammoth
Cave is, and he had this plan. He at the
time was sick with tuberculosis and he wanted to develop
an experimental tuberculosis hospital inside the cave because he believed
(30:22):
that the constant temperature could help people with tuberculosis. There
was this sort of long standing thing where people who
worn'd mining the cave would say that they felt kind
of exuberant after they came out of there, something about
the air. And he thought, okay, well, maybe this would
(30:43):
help people with tuberculosis. And it was also well known
that wood didn't rot that was down there, and from
the Native American mummies that were found and other animals
that have died down there, they know that they're living.
Other living organisms don't rot down there inside the cave.
So he thought, okay, this might be a good thing
to try. So in eighteen forty two, in the fall
(31:09):
of eighteen forty two, he gets sixteen tuberculosis patients to
agree to accompany him. In the cave, they build eight
stone huts. I read they were like ten x twelve
something like that, and they had canvas tops on them,
although only two of them survived now and I'm sure
(31:29):
you saw them, Joe, I don't think the canvas is
on the top anymore, but the stone is still there.
And there were a couple like wooden shacks as well.
Those are since gone, but that's what the people stayed in.
And at first it was somewhat successful. In the first
month or so, people seem to feel a little bit better.
But pretty quickly, the combination of the intense dampness down
(31:53):
there and the fact that it's only fifty four degrees
so you had to build fires for both warmth and
to cook, it filled the whole cave smoke, so it
really made these people a lot worse. And pretty quickly
I mentioned that there were tours that would happen in
the cave, and those tours were happening while this tuberculosis
(32:14):
hospital was there, and there were stories of these like
ghostly skeletal tuberculosis patients just sort of like wandering out
during a tour, or you'd hear them like coughing in
the distance, so just horrifying. Yeah, I know. And then,
you know, a couple months, didn't think about four months in,
a couple of patients died and they were placed on
(32:37):
a big rock that is now called corpse rock or
corpse stone. And shortly after that, as they got about
five months into this, Krogan convinced everybody that it was
time to leave. They went above ground, and five years
later he himself died of tuberculosis. So definitely a very
(33:01):
failed experiment. Doing it did teach us a bit about
what does help treat it. Yeah, you know, we talked
about in what was it our Tombstone or like Wiater
episode about how like Doc Holliday went to Arizona because
by the time of that, which is, you know, fifty
(33:22):
years later, the thought was sort of the opposite. You
want a dry air as opposed like warm, dry air
instead of cold, damp air. Yeah, you might say, oh,
it seems obvious, but the other thing is you don't
want to crowd people close together to have tuberculosis, especially
(33:44):
when not everybody does. And what do I mean by that?
I mean there were enslaved people that were working this hospital,
so crowding a bunch of people together with tuberculosis and
then having people kind of care for them. It's not
a great plan either. Again, in the eighteen forties, we
don't really understand bacteria. We don't really understand the way
(34:05):
that disease is spread. Obviously, tuberculosis spreads very quickly, especially
into confined space, because it's a bacterial infection where the
main symptom is intense coughing. Fits. Yeah, I also didn't.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
You don't really know we want to hang out with
people who have had tuberculosis. I mean, I'll say it's
sort of like a noble to, especially during that period
of time, to like try to, you know, help help people,
but it's uh, yeah, you're probably gonna get tuberculous yourself.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yeah. I also didn't know that tuberculosis was known as
the white plague somehow I've never heard that. But it's
because it makes people very pale. M hm. So there's that.
So I think.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
What I think might be a the thing I because
I probably should have done this like around, I probably
should have done this at the beginning. But it would
be nice to give like kind of like a timeline
here of the history of the of the cave to
kind of get us up to what I want to
get us up to. Its establishment as a well, something
(35:20):
called the Kentucky or the Mammoth Cave Wars, which I
kind of alluded to the beginning, which is like people
bickering over like who owned the cave and like I said,
this is a cave system. There's various different entrances. There's
what people what they call the historic entrance and that
is just like the big asshole in the ground that
you've probably seen pictures of if you look up mammoth. Kay, asshole,
(35:45):
this is really it looks more like a mouth.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I would say, you just said the big asshole. He said,
big asshole, big comma asshole. Wait, no, big ass comma
hole not if you us confused with colon. That gets
(36:07):
us right back to where we started.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
But then there's also like various different entrances that have
been drilled or dynamited into the cave system, and it
goes all over this huge you know, hundreds of acres,
different people's properties and things like that. This also gets
into like if you own the land rights, you know,
do you own the mineral rights? Is a cave system
(36:32):
part of the mineral rights, Like these kinds of things.
But I aggress, so starting going all the way back,
like I said, like about three hundred and twenty five
million years that's when the rocks were laid down. Probably
around ten million years ago is when the rain water
(36:53):
started like dissolving the limestone to form the cave. So
the cave itself is not nearly is old, as it's
like an order of magnitude younger than a couple orders
of magnitude younger than the the rocks that it's made
out of.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
But I aggress it would have to be right, I
mean that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah, About a million years ago is when the like
large sections of the cave that give it the name mammoth,
and so it is it is called Mammoth Cave. Not
because there's mammoth fossils found there. My kids, My kids
(37:34):
did ask me that, I think that's like a legitimate question,
because I think there are some place to scene fossils
found there in addition to the much much older fossils
clearly clearly like animals that kind of like entered the
cave and died. Not to be confused with the fossils
that are like embedded in the walls, because they were
creatures that lived in the ancient ocean, but the very
(37:54):
big passages formed around a million years ago. Like I said,
around five thousand years ago is when we have evidence
for their first native Americans. As we mentioned, Europeans started
to explore this area around the Revolutionary War era. So
(38:16):
Daniel Boone, famous you know American, in seventeen seventy five
found the Cumberland Gap, which is a mountain pass that's
still you know famous today. Obviously also at that time
the Revolutionary War began. In the seventeen nineties, like we said,
(38:40):
John Houchin or possibly Francis Houchin, one of them became
the first people to European settler to find the cave.
And seventeen ninety two Kentucky became a state. It is
Kentucky is like one of the earliest states or one
of the first states after like the original like thirteen column.
(39:02):
In seventeen ninety six, Tennessee became a state. There there
are some like so that that's the bordering state. In
seventeen ninety nine or seventeen ninety eight, Valentine Simons bought
two hundred acres of land which had two Saltpeter caves,
(39:23):
and then he sold those that land and the caves
with them to John Flat, so the large cave became
known as Flat's Cave. And then he sold the property
to John McLean. This is this is important. In eighteen
(39:44):
oh eight MacLean sold Flat's Cave to Fleming Gatewood and
Charles Wilkins. The first published use of Mammoth Cave from
a Richmond, Virginia newspaper in eighteen ten.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
M okay.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
In and also saltpeter the first mining in an area
which would later become known as Booth's Amphitheater. Which is
this large area It's named Booth's Amphitheater after John Wolf's
Booth's brother.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Edwin. Right.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yep, they started mining saltpeter in there. Like you said,
eighteen twelve clared we declared war on England and they
started mining for saltpeter. And as you mentioned, I think,
but I think this is important. It was mainly enslaved
people who were mining the saltpeter inside Mammoth Cave. In
(40:55):
eighteen fifteen.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
The war.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Had ended and saltpeter was no longer needed to be
mined in such mass quantities, so the mining sort of
dried up, so now people are trying to figure out
what to do. And also around this time that people
started to figure out like, well they could try to
use this as a tourist destination. So it's really hard
(41:23):
to farm in this area because the ground is really
hard because that sandstone, among other reasons, it's also very
you know, it's very hilly, and so people like, we're
looking for other ways to make money, and tourism was
the way that they could do that. In eighteen fifteen,
naholm Ward made a trip to Mammoth Cave and drew
(41:48):
a new cave map and wrote a description of the
cave and also some of the mummies that have been
found there, and it was these writings that started to
make Mammoth Cave famous. The next year was the first
formal tour of the cave. In eighteen thirty four, George Gatewood,
(42:09):
who was the manager of Mammoth Cave at the time,
allowed Jesse Sutton to hold the first religious service inside
the cave. And that's the site where that happened is
still known as the Methodist Church. So each of the
rooms inside his cave has like a name. The skipping
(42:37):
ahead from this timeline, if you'd like to know more
about this stuff, I think the National Park Service is
the way to go because they have, like you know,
obviously the best information about it. Doctor John Crogan, who
you mentioned, bought a bunch of our section of cave
(42:59):
and a bunch of acres of land for his tuberculosis patients.
As you mentioned, we talked about this in eighteen forty two.
Is the first description of the blind Cave. Fish around
the side.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
I've heard about these guys.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah, around this time, the Mammoth Cave Hotel was built. So,
like I said, then you get to this portion in
like the second half of the eighteen hundreds where people
are starting to or you get the national park movement.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
So in.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
In eighteen seventy two, Yellowstone National Park was created as
the world's first national park, and people began to shortly
after this advocate for Mammoth Cave to become a national park.
There was in eighteen eighty six a railroad called the
(44:13):
Mammoth Cave Railroad established, which kind of made the the
steamboats on the Green River sort of obsolete. And then
they became more just for entertainment only, like you know,
gambling and sightseeing and things like that. Right in the
early nineteen hundreds, this is the cave began to be
(44:39):
mapped better. In nineteen oh four of the first automobile
arrived at Mammoth Cave from Indianapolis, Indiana, Okay. And so
the late eighteen hundreds is and early nineteen hundreds is
the period of time, like I said that people call
the Mammoth Cave wars, So this is like just an
(45:02):
an time or I'm sorry, the Kentucky Cave wars. So
everyone was trying to like get people to come to
their section of the cave. So there was Mammoth Cave
and there was all these other caves that do actually
connect some of them. But what people would do is
they would actually, like once cars started to arrive, you
(45:24):
would get people who would call cappers who would actually
jump on to the running board of your car and
tell you like, oh, actually, sorry, the Mammoth Cave was closed.
So actually, but you know, but I got my cave
over here that you can go to.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Ah, Okay, that's shifty. Yeah yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
So we already mentioned the Krogan family and some of
these other families who who owned like the the main
parts of the cave, but in the nineteen twenties, George
Morrison started using dynamite to blow open several new entrances
(46:06):
to Mammoth Cave on land that weren't owned by the
Krogan estate, but without the maps that the Krogans had it,
they had to do new surveys. But what they eventually
showed was that the Krogans had been basically leaving their
(46:29):
section of Mammoth Cave that they owned and going into
other sections of the cave on their tours, and so
there was a bunch of lawsuits. Different entrances of the
cave were in direct competition with each other. But eventually,
because of the national park movement, Priva citizens formed the
Mammoth Cave National Park Association in nineteen twenty four, and
(46:56):
this is also after the last of the Krogan family died,
so people started. The people as part of this National
Park Association helped establish the Man Caves a National park
in nineteen twenty six, and then they just started buying
up farmland all around the area to try to get
(47:17):
all the different entrances to the cave and things like that.
Some of the areas of the cave were actually acquired
via eminent domain and the landowners like said that they
were getting paid, like we're getting paid enough for their
land and things like that. There's people that are still
(47:39):
like mad about like their family getting screwed over from
their land and things like that. But yes, but eventually
this would all form the cave that we know today.
(48:00):
By nineteen fifty four, of Mammoth Cave National Park encompassed
all the lands within the cave area except for two
sort of privately held areas. And that's that's kind of
like what the the the modern the modern national park
(48:27):
that you see today. Sorry I said it was the
national or the Mammoth Cave Park Association when established in
the twenties, but it didn't become a national park until
nineteen forty six.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Oh okay, why did that take so.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Long buying up all the land and things like that.
As I mentioned, in nineteen seventy two, we found they
found that the Mammoth Cave system connected to the Flint
Ridge system, officially making it the longest cave system in
the world.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Right.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
So one of the reasons why man Cave is important
is because of all this history and it's very interesting,
but also because of the biology there Now I've already
mentioned like some of the fossils that can be found there,
but just some of the common fossils, like I have
a picture of like a coral, that are just kind
of like they're just sticking out of the rock. We
(49:36):
find a lot of crinoids, which are sometimes called sea lilies.
They are a lot they are a group of their
lives today, but they're related to sea stars. We find
gastropods like snails. But as I mentioned, there are like
forty species of shark. In fact, there's some that are
(50:00):
like you know, you can't find anywhere else in the world.
Two species were fairly recently described, gilk Mannius caraforum and
trog Localodotus trimbly eye, like I said, are only found
inside the cave. And it's really cool you see, like
you know, some of the pictures of like just like
(50:21):
a tooth from a shark relative shark like animal just
like sticking out of the cave. A lot of these
are in kind of like not easily accessible to the
public areas. Fortunately, Dave, we actually did a video about
us for work in twenty twenty. They found a Cyvodis striatus,
which is a shark about like the size of a
modern great white. It's like a very large shark. I right.
(50:45):
And the thing about these is because the limestone is
pretty hard, so they don't typically like excavate the animals
because this would be really hard to do so, but
they can get like portable scanning equipment in to get
scans of these fossils and things like that. But there
are a lot of living animals. There are cave specialists
(51:10):
that live there, like the cave salamander. There are even
some species of eyeless cavefish so there they never leave
the cave and it's very dark, so they they've lost
their eyes. Yeah, the cave crayfish. They are also cave crickets.
Have you ever seen the cave cricket.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
They've Are they the ones that are like white?
Speaker 1 (51:34):
They they are white, yeah, yeah, like pale, kind of
pale in color. They still have some brown on them.
There's cave crickets that are found out of the world,
but they're like they're often like they're really big and
they look pretty. They look pretty gnarly. I think they're awesome.
There are several species of cave crickets. We actually saw
a few while they were there. I mentioned the cave salamander.
(51:57):
But the thing that is kind of like most import
and about Mammoth Cave are the bats, especially the Indiana bat,
which is a fatterly protected species. But they also have
the gray bat, the little brown bat, the big brown bat,
and the tricolored bat. But a problem with these bats
is something called white nose syndrome. It's contagious and it
(52:22):
does eventually kill the bats. And so because of this,
when you enter the cave, you actually have to wash
your feet when you enter and exit. Oh shit, Cave
sent me a picture of a cave cricket with the
predators face on it.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Yeah, it's pretty sweet, like one ugly.
Speaker 1 (52:44):
Especially way I said to the cave crickets while we
were down there. Yeah, they're very admit about like and
very precise be how you have to wash your your
feet or your boots before you exit the cave. Just
wanted to talk a little bit real quickly about like
just going to Mammoth Cave and what it is like.
(53:04):
So there are some you you have to book a tour.
You can't just like go in the cave on your
own because it could be pretty dangerous.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
To do that. Well, sure, there is.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Uh, there's like a self guided tour that you can
go on where you enter into the what's called the
historic entrance, and again that's like kind of the big
entrance of the cave. You're probably going to see if
you look at a picture of it. And then there
are also guided tours which will take you to deeper
sections of the cave where you can see some of
(53:38):
the kind of named sites like the the you know, uh,
the booths, booths, ampheters, just thank you.
Speaker 2 (53:56):
I got you.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
And those are like guided tours where the the park
ranger will tell you about things. What's really interesting is
one of the things that the ranger did while you
were down there is they actually turned off the lights.
When you turn off the lights, it is completely pitch black.
After a few moments, you cannot tell the difference between
(54:18):
whether your eyes are open and your eyes are closed. Wow,
that's like that's how dark it is. Is. It's just
like it's a darkness that you can't like you kind
of can't comprehend because even like your house, you turn
all the lights, like there's still like different like sources
of light. Sure, but this is this it's so dark.
(54:39):
They warned us that they were gonna do it and
things like that. But the other thing that is like
just the wildest part is the constant fifty four degree temperature,
which I mentioned right, And what happens is you will
get close to one of the entrances and you may
not be able to see the entrance yet, and then
all of a sudden, it was like one hundred degrees
(55:00):
and all of a sudden, it feels like you're in
an air conditioner, Like you're getting blasted from with air conditioning,
like as you're about to enter a building, you know,
like that like the air air curtain, and just because
like that cold air just kind of like comes down
the hill.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
And also what we noticed was in the evening time,
when it was very very humid, clouds formed over the
surface of the cave.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
Oh interesting by the entrance.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
Like you you could see like haze from the cold
air condensing the water vapor into liquid water, and those
droplets coalescing, which is what we call a cloud. Yeah,
absolutely fucking wild. So that's that's I think like the
(55:53):
part that was like the wildest to me. In addition
to the majesty of like these huge rooms which I
can't even really describe pictures don't do it justice, I
would say, because it's pretty hard to take pictures down
there because you cannot use flash photography. Yeah, luckily with
modern like you know, modern cell phones, they've got like
(56:15):
like long exposure photographs. So I took some decent photos,
but like it just really doesn't do it justice. So
kind of just have to go there yourself.
Speaker 2 (56:24):
Damn Well.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
I could ramble on for a lot longer about Mammoth Cave,
but but I will not. But anything else that you
wanted to add, Dave.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
No, just that I would like to go there. I've
wanted to go there for a while, and this is
certainly like reinforcing that.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
I'm sending you some pictures. The one I sent you
is just like what the like looks like in part
of it, and the other one is standing in front
of the entrance where or it's really an exit where
they're sticks exits out of the cave and just a
you know, a few hundred feet to like the right
of us in that photo is where it connects with
(57:08):
the Green River. Sure, but we're standing on like that
deck there, and even though we're outside, we're not in
the cave. You can feel the cold air rushing out
of that hole in the ground, and it felt like
it felt great. Well, I can imagine yeah, and then imagine.
Speaker 2 (57:31):
It gets a little chili at once you've been in
the cave for a while.
Speaker 1 (57:34):
Yeah, And that's actually one of the problems was what
I felt like I was.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
Going to get heat exhaustion.
Speaker 1 (57:40):
Was because we we we were where. I was wearing
pants because I didn't want to be cold in the cave,
and also we'd been in the car. But we got
there and we had to like we it wasn't time
for our tour. We still had like, you know, a
couple hours. So I'm walking around in jeans and I
(58:04):
think I just like got overheated.
Speaker 2 (58:07):
Oh what is this egg? Oh is this a croke? Madame? No, no, no, Dave.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
This is what I wanted to This is what I
think we should close out with.
Speaker 2 (58:19):
Yeah, that's what I ate.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
After we wait, wait, hiked around all afternoon and went
inside the cave and everything that is a Kentucky hot brown.
You know, you know, you know what that Have you
heard of this?
Speaker 2 (58:31):
No?
Speaker 1 (58:31):
It sounds like something a nice lady gives you by
the underneath the interstate.
Speaker 2 (58:35):
That's what it does the Kentucky something you pay extra for.
Speaker 1 (58:42):
The Kentucky hot brown is a is a famous dish
and it is a big piece of Texas toast. This
is a This is a like a sneaky National Delicacies here.
I can maybe go into the history of it if
we if we do know one of those episodes, but.
Speaker 2 (58:59):
Is this would be like a hillbilly crooked madon.
Speaker 1 (59:03):
It's a big piece of Texas toast. Some good smoked turkey,
like sliced. This also had ham. The ham was really fatty.
Speaker 2 (59:15):
I can see that.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
So I I like, I I had like used up
a lot of calories. So I actually it was like
really like enjoying that.
Speaker 2 (59:24):
But I think that.
Speaker 1 (59:26):
The ham I could do without. The turkey is essential, sure,
and then bacon and then the whole fucking thing is
covered in Mornee sauce, which is a Mornai sauce.
Speaker 2 (59:41):
Is a Hillbilly Holidays.
Speaker 1 (59:43):
No, it's not Hillbilly Holidays. It is uh Mornee is
a a bechamel your wife, what Mornee is? Yeah, Morne
is is a derivative of so Holidays is one of
the mother sauces. One of the other mother sauce is bechamel,
which is a flour based root with milk.
Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
Then if you add.
Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
A cheese like Greyere or Swiss, then you get more nee.
So it's a fancy cheese sauce. It's not hillbilly, I
would say. And then to make sure, you know, you
kind of like make it a little healthy, you put
a big fat slice of tomato.
Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Oh oh yeah on there. And also I know that
with a little extra salt, those green beans slap.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Dude, the green bean slapped so hard. Yeah, almost as
almost as goes the hot brown. But you need that tomato.
You need the tomato because otherwise it's like so much
fat and carves it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
It's like it's.
Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Over the edge. But the cool fresh tomato just brings
it back off the cliff just enough that you can
eat it without hating yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
I know exactly what you mean.
Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
Yes, so yeah, So that's that's the Kentucky cot brown
bonus bonus food content in this episode.
Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
Hell yeah, man, that looks great to me.
Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
Well that's all I have to say about Mammoth Cave.
I mean, I could talk for days about like the
geology especially, but I am actually proud of myself. How
brief I kept that part.
Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
No, that was great, I mean, very informative. And then
you know, it did a good job of explaining what
uh you know, a lot of the other things we
talked about, understanding why somebody might think, oh, this will
be a good place for a tuberculous's hospital. You know.
Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
Well uh yeah, I mean it does seem strange, but
there are like you know, actually like you know, large rooms,
and then there was various times where you know, people
like held concerts and.
Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Things in there.
Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
So yeah, hell yeah, man, uh yeah, Well, so go
visit Mamth Cave. Support our National park system, which yep,
you know is very important right now, and Itta Kentucky
Hot Brown.
Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
Yeah, and if you've been to Mammoth k we'd love
to hear about your experience. You know, how to get
a hold of us on Instagram or an Hour of
Our Time podcast at gmail dot com and tell us
about how you saw the tuberculosis huts.
Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
Hell yeah, yep, all right, well buy everyone.
Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Talk to you soon. Thank you for listening to an
Hour of Our Time.
Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
If you like what you heard, explore our catalog of
over two hundred episodes and rate and review us on
your platform of choice.
Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
And If you'd like to support what we do, visit
patreon dot com. Slash an hour of Our time podcast
Welcome to An Hour of Our Time, the podcast where
we pick a topic, research it, and come back to
tell you what we've learned. Today, we're going to talk
about Mammoth Cave, the longest cave system in the world,
United States National Park, and an Hour of Our Time
podcast Vacation Destination.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm Joe and I'm Dave.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Well Mar.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yeah, what are you opening?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Sac a Tuck Green Company Bonfire Brown. I was going
to get a like Kentucky yeah themed beer, but this
is from Michigan. I didn't have time to go to this.
Actually I would have had time, but I just like
completely I was very tired, and I completely went on
autopilot when I was coming home from work and I
just like went straight to uh straight to straight to
(01:05):
my house.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Uh sure this will do, this will do. Yeah. Well Joe,
why why were you, you know, thinking maybe something from Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Well, uh, we you know, I try to avoid talking
about Kentucky.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Uh just just in general, a general rule of thumb.
I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
My family is actually from Kentucky, but we're not talking
about necessarily Kentucky the state. We are talking about very
specific thing. Kentucky one of the probably most famous landmarks.
We were talking about Mammoth Cave.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, have you been to Mammoth Cave? Joe?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Well, so this is you know, I really did the
work for this one. So well, we talked about we
talked about what we knew about Mammoth Cave before we
started studying for this. So, Dave, did you know anything
about Mammoth Cave before this?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Not really. I knew that it was the longest cave
system in the world, but that was about it. I
knew it was in Kentucky. I've never been there, yeah,
so that was about all I could say about it. Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I knew about it, but I didn't but I had
never been and actually, uh, to study for this, I
did actually go to Mammoth Cave. Of course, we we
decided that we were going to do uh, Mammoth Cave
(02:36):
after I had already like you know, decided that I
was going to go there. But it is true that
I went to Mammoth Cave for the podcast or to
study for the podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
So yeah, I have actually not too long ago, right.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, we went just to well a couple of weeks
ago recording this and gaining of August, and I went
there like, uh, you know, late July, we drove down
with family vacation. We didn't want to drive the whole
way to the Smoking Mountains in Tennessee all all one
(03:17):
piece with our small children in the car, so we
decided to break it up. And also we really you know,
like I said, we wanted to see a Manth Cave.
So we drove down there, visited Mammoth Cave, spent like good,
like a whole day there really sure in between between,
like you know, afternoon of one day and morning of
(03:38):
the next, headed out and went to the Smoking Mountains,
which I don't know, maybe we could do a we
was do an episode about mountains sometime. But you've never
been to Manth Cave, Dave, I have never been. Okay,
well we'll talk about let's talk about what it is
and then I will try to convince you to go.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Okay, Well, I mean you wanted to convince me very hard.
I just happened to have never been.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
But yeah, it's one of those things where like I
wish that I would have gone sooner, and I can't
wait to go again. It was like really cool. I
like doing like you know, outdoor shit. I guess this
is kind of outdoors because you're inside and well, yeah,
and it's always fifty four degrees inside the cave. It's
like air conditioning. And it was hot as fuck when
(04:25):
we were there, so it felt really nice being inside
the cave. In fact, I think I was like getting
heat exhaustion before we went into the cave on the
tour that we went on. And it's like really good
that I got inside the cave because I was like,
I was feeling bad.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So what is Mayoth Caves. Mayoth Cave is It is
a cave system. It is also a national park in
the United States in the state of Kentucky. It's in
south central Kentucky. So it is famous for being not
only the longest cave in the United States, it's actually
the longest cave system in the world, which is really cool.
(05:06):
And in fact, it's what I said, I said that,
oh yeah, yeah, right, well yeah, I'm I'm just kind
of like emphasizing, Oh, okay, it's really cool because to
describe like how big it is, it's like fully one
and a half times longer than the next largest cave
(05:27):
or in the next longest cave system, which is uh
Sock Octoon, which is in Mexico. The thing about sock
Octoon is it's like the thing that makes man with
Cave like really cool is that it is very easy
to visit. Some of these other cave systems, like Sockoctoon
in the Yucatan of Mexico, it's pretty hard to visit
(05:50):
because it is underwater.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Uh yeah, I would, I'd go ahead and say that
that adds a level of complexity to visiting it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
So, so it's not gonna be something that like your
average you know, family is going to go explore. But
but Mam Cave is certainly easy to do, especially if
you go on like you know, kind of some of
the easier like entrances. But yeah, so just some some
more basic facts. It is. The park is located on
(06:23):
about fifty two thousand acres, which is mostly in Edmondson
Edmundson County, but the cave sofa can be that this
actually like extends into like neighboring counties.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
The the river that flows are are the river that
runs through the park like on the surface and it's
partly involved in the creation of the cave, which we'll
kind of talk about is called the Green River, which
at one point was a really important like river you know, highway.
(07:06):
The cave is formally formally called the Mammoth flint Ridge
Cave System because in nineteen seventy two they actually discovered
that Mammoth Cave connects to another cave system called the
flint Ridge Cave System. People still call it Mammoth Cave
because that's that's the famous thing, famous name. It was
(07:32):
a we kind of talked about this a little bit
later far as far as like I know, Dave, you
looked at some of like the kind of like more
historical elements of it. But it was established as a
National park in nineteen forty one, which is actually like
it's one of the early national parks.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, And there was like a but prior to it
becoming a national park, there was a lot of like
I don't know, legal battles and stuff about like who
owned the cave and who owned like different parts of it,
and it was unclear like where you know, certain people's
claims ended in other people's claims began and things like that.
It was named a World Heritage Site in nineteen eighty one.
(08:18):
Uh and it is also was named an International Dark
Sky Park in twenty twenty one. So another cool thing
about it, well, this is these dark sky park is
places where there's very little light pollution.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Oh okay, cool.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So another cool thing about it is that you can
see like a shit a ton of stars when you're there.
I actually like could see more stars and things there
than when we were in the Smoky Mountains because the
smoke where we were in the Smoking Mountains was we
were so close to the fucking eyesore known as Gallenburg
(08:59):
and the other or I sore known as Pigeon Forge.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Just just kidding.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
They were fun, but they were like a lot of
light pollution because it's like imagine like Vegas in the Appalachians.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Oh, that is quite a description.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, that's I think that's an apt description if you've
ever been there.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
So anyway, so I'm reinly going to talk about the
like how the cave was formed, some of the interesting
like geology and actually paleontology, which is like kind of
why I wanted to go there. But sure I really
didn't see like, uh, I didn't really see that many fossils.
Well I did see some, And then I think, Dave,
(09:39):
you're going to talk about some of the like more
kind of like human history stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah. Absolutely, and then and then at.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Towards the end, I think I'm going to talk about
like what it's what it's like to go visit there,
if you like went to visit there today, including like
my own experience, because it was fucking wild.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Okay, So.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
This is a this is a great example of a
limestone cave, and it's just notable. It's sort of like
a kind of standard cave, like this is kind of
how a lot of caves form. It just happens to
be so large. So it is a limestone cave. So
(10:23):
the rocks that it are formed in our Mississippian age.
So if you're sort of familiar with the geologic time skilled,
the Mississippian is one of the two portions of what
we used to call the Carboniferous or sometimes it's still
(10:43):
called the Carboniferous, and it would be the first part
of the carbonifer So now that's often you'll see that
split into the Mississippian and the Pennsylvanian. But basically this
would be from about three hundred and in fifteen nine
to about three d and twenty three million years ago.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
We do have.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Mississippian. We do have Mississippian age rocks. Here in Ohio
they're more but although they're not they're not here in
this part of the state where Dave and I live,
kind of like the central part, gotcha. But that's like
that's where all like, that's what all the the coal
is from in this country.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Hence the name the carboniferous. That's got a lot of
carbon and that. So why is this important? So it's
it's limestone is what those rocks are. And limestone is
a sedimentary rock, which is mainly it's it's basically mainly
made from the bodies of like extinct of extinct orders
(11:58):
or not extinct orders, but like fall organisms or at
least it contains a lot of fossils of extinct orgism.
So mainly we get fossils of like hard bodied things
when you think of like bones and teeth, but also
(12:21):
like shells. So there's two forms of calcium carbonate. Uh,
there's calcite and aragonite in different kinds of organisms like clams,
nails and other things that you may not have heard of,
make their shells out of this calcium carbonate. When they die,
(12:42):
you know, they sink to the bottom and then become
incorporated into this limestone. But limestone is also a dissolved
by acid, which is very relevant in the moment. But
what makes what makes Mammoth Cave unique is that sitting
(13:03):
on top of that limestone there is a cap of sandstone.
So it's called the big clifty sandstone. And I think
they've I'd be very familiar with sandstone. I guess I
didn't ask if you're familiar with.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Limestone, limestone more than sandstone. Well, what is sandstone made of?
Speaker 1 (13:29):
You think, I'm guessing sand Yep, it's it's essentially compressed
lithified sand. The thing about sandstone is that it does
not dissolve in acid. So you have this limestone bedrock,
and then they's capped with sandstone. So and there are
(13:55):
like it's a little bit more complicated than that. I mean,
there are like kind of like some layers of limes
stone sort of interspersed with sandstone, kind of sandwich between.
But for the most part, I think of like a
block of limestone with the sandstone on top. Okay, so
now why is this important? So the way that the
cave formed is you have ground water percolates through cracks
(14:21):
in the sandstone cap rock and filters down into the
limestone the rain water that then becomes the groundwater. It's
slightly acidic because of dissolved carbon dioxide. When the carbon
dioxide is dissolved in water, it becomes carbonic acid. So
(14:45):
if you're drinking something like carbonated water, that's why I like,
carbonated water is acidic, and it's a very very weak acid.
It's like far far weaker than like, you know, like
if you're drinking like a soda.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Or probably citric acid. Far far less, far weaker than
citric acid.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
It's far weaker than that. It's just weaker than like
you need this beer that I'm drinking, or even like
a you know, like a soda water. But it is
acidic enough that it eats through the limestone, but it
doesn't eat through the sandstone on top, so you get
eventually carves through the limestone and leaves this cap on top.
(15:29):
So it's really cool. Like my son even asked me,
like when we were inside the cave, like looking up
at the roof or the ceiling so to speak, he
was like, you know, Dad, is that like is that natural?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Like?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Because it looks so smooth and and it is it
looks like a ceiling. It's like in certain parts it's
like almost perfectly smooth. In other parts you'll see the
classic like stalactites, which are the ones that hang down,
the pointy things.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, So so that is essentially like how the cave
is formed. There's there's also a river that runs through
the cave, which is actually called the river sticks you
can actually yeah, well it's a it's a it's an
(16:23):
under underground river like through through hades, right, yeah, and
so it's uh, yeah, it's really cool, and uh, that's
essentially how it's formed. Now people have been you know,
looking or or visiting Mammoth Cave for quite a long time.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
I guess I should.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Back up a little step here to talk about some
of the paleontology. Because of the uh, because of the
makeup of the limestone, it was like part of an
ancient ocean. There are tons and tons of fossils. In fact,
(17:10):
they've found over forty species of fossil shark in Mammoth Cave.
And in fact, when I was there, the day I
was there, they actually announced a new species that they
had described.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
So well, that's a serendipitous for you. Yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
It's kind of strange to think about this. Well, Kentucky
is completely landlocked in the United States, and then you're
also like under ground. But again you have to remember
the limestone that this is made out of forms a
or was formed from the ancient sea bed. And in fact,
(17:52):
there's like many sections of the cave that I was
pointing out to my family where you could clearly see
like tons of tons of coral. So like, you know,
three and sixty million years ago, this would have been
a core Yeah, about three hundred and sixty million years ago,
(18:12):
this had been like a corel reef and actually kind
of like a more equatorial tropical environment kind of you
kind of think about like the Bahamas. If have ever
been in the Bahamas.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Dave, No, but I'm aware of what the weather's like.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Oh, even like South Florida, right, Oh yes, so like
that kind of blue like turquoise blue water. It's like,
you know, relatively shallow. Imagine imagine the area where we
are now and in Kentucky was like that. Of course,
later that was you know, uplifted with a mountain building
(18:52):
to form the Appalachians. But I digress or actually, no,
it wasn't after that. But so the the rocks that
the Appalachian Mountains are made out of actually quite a
lot older.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, the Appalation Mountains are like among the oldest mountain
ranges on the planet.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Right, Yes, they are extremely old. There's several different mountain
building events, but some of them are from actually around
just a little bit after. Are actually sort of like
during the time period that the rocks that make in
Mammoth Cave reformed, and then also some are like after.
(19:38):
So yeah, anyway, I digress. I shout to make sure
I didn't speak out of turn about the age of
the Appalachian Mountains. They are incredibly ancient.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Sure, yeah, all right, So.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Getting into like kind of the history. So, like I said,
people have there's documented human activity in Mammoth Cave. The
goes back at least five thousand years, so people have
been using this cave for a long time now.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
I think that.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
It's important to to note that, like we think about
like quote unquote cavemen or like just people like living
in caves. Usually people didn't like live in caves because
it's like kind of dark dark in caves and also
like animals tend to live in there. So people used
(20:32):
caves for for various different things like shelters and even
places for burials and things like that, but often people
did not live in the caves. But anyway, So there
are many sets of Native American remains found inside Mammoth
(20:54):
Cave and the other other like cave systems in the area, right,
and they do some of them seem to be intentional burial,
like they were placed there.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
And they're mummified because of the conditions within the cave.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yes, oh, sorry, so I didn't mention the kind of
the I was going to kind of talk a little
bit more about the weird like micro climate of the
cave later when I talk about like kind of my
experience of going there or like what it's like if
you go there.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
But sure, and that micro climate will be obviously relevant
to what I want to talk about.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Yeah, yeah, and yeah, I didn't want to step on
what you were talking about. But also, yeah, it just
so it's only fifty four degrees and and so, and
it's actually like parts of it are quite dry air. So, yes,
these remains were mummified, as you said, So, so people
(21:53):
started to like research some of the people that used
the cave. There are various different artifacts that have been found,
some of them and some replicas of them you can
actually like see on display. Now these remains are within
(22:13):
the caves are protected by a different like federal laws.
And also now there are issues with something called the
Graves Act, was actually like passed in the nineties but
is only now sort of going into effect, where it's
illegal to display Native American artifacts without permission from the tribe.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Essentially gotcha. But then if you skip.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Ahead in time to like written history, in seventeen ninety one,
there was one of the first surveys of the cave
by European It's called the Pollard Survey, where they were
(23:06):
surveying areas around the Green River. And the legend is
that the first Europeans to visit Mammoth Cave where either
John Houchin or his brother Francis Houchin. It's unclear whether,
like you know, it seems like people may have visited
it before that, but you know, supposedly Houchin they were
(23:32):
chasing a wounded bear to the cave's entrance near the
Green River, and I actually saw this. There's like an
area where you can see the river coming out or
the water coming out of the cave pretty close to
where it connects with the Green River. Okay, but it's
(23:57):
kind of unclear because.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
The uh.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
John Houchin was also named Johnny Dick.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Okay, but he was like apparently it was.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Apparently ten years old in seventeen ninety seven, so it's
like maybe unlikely they dose out hunting bears when he's
ten years old, although it was the late seventeen unders
in Kentucky, so who knows. Yeah, it is more likely
that his his father John was the one that found
(24:36):
the all right, It's more likely that he found the cave,
but I think most people think that it was Francis
Frank Houchin, brother of John Houchin. I feel like I
can't really like care that much about this, but.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
It feels like this is detail that I guess doesn't
really matter. Yeah, but anyway, which one of them it was,
you know.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
But roundabouts the seventeen nineties is when people Europeans I
should say, found the cave, right, So then people started
to kind of explore the cave. But it really kind
of a lot of this exploration that really got kicked
off at the beginning of the eighteen hundreds, especially with
(25:29):
the war of eighteen twelve.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Mm hmm, absolutely, and that is because the cave itself
because of the large population of bats and their depositing
of guano all over the cave. But that breaks down,
It breaks down into calcium nitrate, and that mineral can
(25:55):
be mixed with other potassium rich materials to create potassium
nitrate or saltpeter. If saltpeter is a main ingredient in
black gunpowder, which is obviously widely used the time, and
when the War of eighteen twelve breaks out, saltpeter is
in high demand, so the cave is mined extensively. They
(26:20):
would extract calcium nitrate by using water to basically filter
the cave dirt. They have these big vats of water
and then they would pump that calcium nitrate in water
solution back to the surface. And I say they, I
mean enslaved people would do this and then they would
(26:45):
combine it with again other potassium rich things like wood
ash or blood like ox blood, animal blood to make saltpeter.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Gross.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Yeah. The other interesting thing about this is that when
so these enslaved people that were mining it were also
the people who built many of the first trails inside
the cave as you would have to to get around.
And when the war ended and the demand for saltpeter
drastically fell, it became a tourist attraction. You have this
(27:17):
big cave, you have all of these trails, and that's
sort of how that happened.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
It was interesting though, like some of the artifacts from
that are actually like still in the cave because the
cave's climate kind of preserve preserves everything that's down there. Yeah,
there are relics going back to that time period. And
then also like all the subsequent you know, events inside
(27:48):
the cave.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Subsequent events you mean like a tuberculosis hospital.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yes, well, also like I don't know, Dave, did you
see any do you find thinking about the the the
mushroom growing that happened in the cave?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
No, I didn't see that.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Just various different people have used it for different things.
It kind of became like a tourist destination, like fairly
early on. But before you you should talk about what
you're going to talk about. But one thing that people
tried to do was there's a family who tried to
grow mushrooms. They had heard about the white mushrooms that
(28:28):
people have been cultivating for a long time in the
catacombs of Paris, and so they started growing mushrooms. They
had like gotten there, like you know kind of like
basically like raised beds kind of things, and you could
see them still down there to grow mushrooms. Just before
they were about to harvest their crops, someone poured machine
(28:50):
oil on the mushroom beds, destroying them and ruined rude
their fledgling mushroom business. But you like said, you could
still see like all that kind of quote unquote junk
that's down there. So they're very careful to tell you
like basically like if you see anything that looks like
maybe it's like trash, like don't pick it up because
(29:13):
it might actually be historical. But also like they're very
stringent about like do not throw any trash in the cave.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
So yeah, so it's been used for various other things,
like you said, like as a tuberculous hospital.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah so, I mean, like you said, it was sort
of rediscovered by Europeans in the seventeen nineties, and by
the late you know, you know, right after the War
of eighteen twelve eighteen fifteen or so, it starts to
become a tourist attraction and in eighteen thirty nine. In
October of eighteen thirty nine, a doctor from Kentucky named
(29:58):
John Crogan. He purchases around two thousand acres near the
Green River and that included the land under which Mammoth
Cave is, and he had this plan. He at the
time was sick with tuberculosis and he wanted to develop
an experimental tuberculosis hospital inside the cave because he believed
(30:22):
that the constant temperature could help people with tuberculosis. There
was this sort of long standing thing where people who
worn'd mining the cave would say that they felt kind
of exuberant after they came out of there, something about
the air. And he thought, okay, well, maybe this would
(30:43):
help people with tuberculosis. And it was also well known
that wood didn't rot that was down there, and from
the Native American mummies that were found and other animals
that have died down there, they know that they're living.
Other living organisms don't rot down there inside the cave.
So he thought, okay, this might be a good thing
to try. So in eighteen forty two, in the fall
(31:09):
of eighteen forty two, he gets sixteen tuberculosis patients to
agree to accompany him. In the cave, they build eight
stone huts. I read they were like ten x twelve
something like that, and they had canvas tops on them,
although only two of them survived now and I'm sure
(31:29):
you saw them, Joe, I don't think the canvas is
on the top anymore, but the stone is still there.
And there were a couple like wooden shacks as well.
Those are since gone, but that's what the people stayed in.
And at first it was somewhat successful. In the first
month or so, people seem to feel a little bit better.
But pretty quickly, the combination of the intense dampness down
(31:53):
there and the fact that it's only fifty four degrees
so you had to build fires for both warmth and
to cook, it filled the whole cave smoke, so it
really made these people a lot worse. And pretty quickly
I mentioned that there were tours that would happen in
the cave, and those tours were happening while this tuberculosis
(32:14):
hospital was there, and there were stories of these like
ghostly skeletal tuberculosis patients just sort of like wandering out
during a tour, or you'd hear them like coughing in
the distance, so just horrifying. Yeah, I know. And then,
you know, a couple months, didn't think about four months in,
a couple of patients died and they were placed on
(32:37):
a big rock that is now called corpse rock or
corpse stone. And shortly after that, as they got about
five months into this, Krogan convinced everybody that it was
time to leave. They went above ground, and five years
later he himself died of tuberculosis. So definitely a very
(33:01):
failed experiment. Doing it did teach us a bit about
what does help treat it. Yeah, you know, we talked
about in what was it our Tombstone or like Wiater
episode about how like Doc Holliday went to Arizona because
by the time of that, which is, you know, fifty
(33:22):
years later, the thought was sort of the opposite. You
want a dry air as opposed like warm, dry air
instead of cold, damp air. Yeah, you might say, oh,
it seems obvious, but the other thing is you don't
want to crowd people close together to have tuberculosis, especially
(33:44):
when not everybody does. And what do I mean by that?
I mean there were enslaved people that were working this hospital,
so crowding a bunch of people together with tuberculosis and
then having people kind of care for them. It's not
a great plan either. Again, in the eighteen forties, we
don't really understand bacteria. We don't really understand the way
(34:05):
that disease is spread. Obviously, tuberculosis spreads very quickly, especially
into confined space, because it's a bacterial infection where the
main symptom is intense coughing. Fits. Yeah, I also didn't.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
You don't really know we want to hang out with
people who have had tuberculosis. I mean, I'll say it's
sort of like a noble to, especially during that period
of time, to like try to, you know, help help people,
but it's uh, yeah, you're probably gonna get tuberculous yourself.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yeah. I also didn't know that tuberculosis was known as
the white plague somehow I've never heard that. But it's
because it makes people very pale. M hm. So there's that.
So I think.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
What I think might be a the thing I because
I probably should have done this like around, I probably
should have done this at the beginning. But it would
be nice to give like kind of like a timeline
here of the history of the of the cave to
kind of get us up to what I want to
get us up to. Its establishment as a well, something
(35:20):
called the Kentucky or the Mammoth Cave Wars, which I
kind of alluded to the beginning, which is like people
bickering over like who owned the cave and like I said,
this is a cave system. There's various different entrances. There's
what people what they call the historic entrance and that
is just like the big asshole in the ground that
you've probably seen pictures of if you look up mammoth. Kay, asshole,
(35:45):
this is really it looks more like a mouth.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I would say, you just said the big asshole. He said,
big asshole, big comma asshole. Wait, no, big ass comma
hole not if you us confused with colon. That gets
(36:07):
us right back to where we started.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
But then there's also like various different entrances that have
been drilled or dynamited into the cave system, and it
goes all over this huge you know, hundreds of acres,
different people's properties and things like that. This also gets
into like if you own the land rights, you know,
do you own the mineral rights? Is a cave system
(36:32):
part of the mineral rights, Like these kinds of things.
But I aggress, so starting going all the way back,
like I said, like about three hundred and twenty five
million years that's when the rocks were laid down. Probably
around ten million years ago is when the rain water
(36:53):
started like dissolving the limestone to form the cave. So
the cave itself is not nearly is old, as it's
like an order of magnitude younger than a couple orders
of magnitude younger than the the rocks that it's made
out of.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
But I aggress it would have to be right, I
mean that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah, About a million years ago is when the like
large sections of the cave that give it the name mammoth,
and so it is it is called Mammoth Cave. Not
because there's mammoth fossils found there. My kids, My kids
(37:34):
did ask me that, I think that's like a legitimate question,
because I think there are some place to scene fossils
found there in addition to the much much older fossils
clearly clearly like animals that kind of like entered the
cave and died. Not to be confused with the fossils
that are like embedded in the walls, because they were
creatures that lived in the ancient ocean, but the very
(37:54):
big passages formed around a million years ago. Like I said,
around five thousand years ago is when we have evidence
for their first native Americans. As we mentioned, Europeans started
to explore this area around the Revolutionary War era. So
(38:16):
Daniel Boone, famous you know American, in seventeen seventy five
found the Cumberland Gap, which is a mountain pass that's
still you know famous today. Obviously also at that time
the Revolutionary War began. In the seventeen nineties, like we said,
(38:40):
John Houchin or possibly Francis Houchin, one of them became
the first people to European settler to find the cave.
And seventeen ninety two Kentucky became a state. It is
Kentucky is like one of the earliest states or one
of the first states after like the original like thirteen column.
(39:02):
In seventeen ninety six, Tennessee became a state. There there
are some like so that that's the bordering state. In
seventeen ninety nine or seventeen ninety eight, Valentine Simons bought
two hundred acres of land which had two Saltpeter caves,
(39:23):
and then he sold those that land and the caves
with them to John Flat, so the large cave became
known as Flat's Cave. And then he sold the property
to John McLean. This is this is important. In eighteen
(39:44):
oh eight MacLean sold Flat's Cave to Fleming Gatewood and
Charles Wilkins. The first published use of Mammoth Cave from
a Richmond, Virginia newspaper in eighteen ten.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
M okay.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
In and also saltpeter the first mining in an area
which would later become known as Booth's Amphitheater. Which is
this large area It's named Booth's Amphitheater after John Wolf's
Booth's brother.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Edwin. Right.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yep, they started mining saltpeter in there. Like you said,
eighteen twelve clared we declared war on England and they
started mining for saltpeter. And as you mentioned, I think,
but I think this is important. It was mainly enslaved
people who were mining the saltpeter inside Mammoth Cave. In
(40:55):
eighteen fifteen.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
The war.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Had ended and saltpeter was no longer needed to be
mined in such mass quantities, so the mining sort of
dried up, so now people are trying to figure out
what to do. And also around this time that people
started to figure out like, well they could try to
use this as a tourist destination. So it's really hard
(41:23):
to farm in this area because the ground is really
hard because that sandstone, among other reasons, it's also very
you know, it's very hilly, and so people like, we're
looking for other ways to make money, and tourism was
the way that they could do that. In eighteen fifteen,
naholm Ward made a trip to Mammoth Cave and drew
(41:48):
a new cave map and wrote a description of the
cave and also some of the mummies that have been
found there, and it was these writings that started to
make Mammoth Cave famous. The next year was the first
formal tour of the cave. In eighteen thirty four, George Gatewood,
(42:09):
who was the manager of Mammoth Cave at the time,
allowed Jesse Sutton to hold the first religious service inside
the cave. And that's the site where that happened is
still known as the Methodist Church. So each of the
rooms inside his cave has like a name. The skipping
(42:37):
ahead from this timeline, if you'd like to know more
about this stuff, I think the National Park Service is
the way to go because they have, like you know,
obviously the best information about it. Doctor John Crogan, who
you mentioned, bought a bunch of our section of cave
(42:59):
and a bunch of acres of land for his tuberculosis patients.
As you mentioned, we talked about this in eighteen forty two.
Is the first description of the blind Cave. Fish around
the side.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
I've heard about these guys.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah, around this time, the Mammoth Cave Hotel was built. So,
like I said, then you get to this portion in
like the second half of the eighteen hundreds where people
are starting to or you get the national park movement.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
So in.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
In eighteen seventy two, Yellowstone National Park was created as
the world's first national park, and people began to shortly
after this advocate for Mammoth Cave to become a national park.
There was in eighteen eighty six a railroad called the
(44:13):
Mammoth Cave Railroad established, which kind of made the the
steamboats on the Green River sort of obsolete. And then
they became more just for entertainment only, like you know,
gambling and sightseeing and things like that. Right in the
early nineteen hundreds, this is the cave began to be
(44:39):
mapped better. In nineteen oh four of the first automobile
arrived at Mammoth Cave from Indianapolis, Indiana, Okay. And so
the late eighteen hundreds is and early nineteen hundreds is
the period of time, like I said that people call
the Mammoth Cave wars, So this is like just an
(45:02):
an time or I'm sorry, the Kentucky Cave wars. So
everyone was trying to like get people to come to
their section of the cave. So there was Mammoth Cave
and there was all these other caves that do actually
connect some of them. But what people would do is
they would actually, like once cars started to arrive, you
(45:24):
would get people who would call cappers who would actually
jump on to the running board of your car and
tell you like, oh, actually, sorry, the Mammoth Cave was closed.
So actually, but you know, but I got my cave
over here that you can go to.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Ah, Okay, that's shifty. Yeah yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
So we already mentioned the Krogan family and some of
these other families who who owned like the the main
parts of the cave, but in the nineteen twenties, George
Morrison started using dynamite to blow open several new entrances
(46:06):
to Mammoth Cave on land that weren't owned by the
Krogan estate, but without the maps that the Krogans had it,
they had to do new surveys. But what they eventually
showed was that the Krogans had been basically leaving their
(46:29):
section of Mammoth Cave that they owned and going into
other sections of the cave on their tours, and so
there was a bunch of lawsuits. Different entrances of the
cave were in direct competition with each other. But eventually,
because of the national park movement, Priva citizens formed the
Mammoth Cave National Park Association in nineteen twenty four, and
(46:56):
this is also after the last of the Krogan family died,
so people started. The people as part of this National
Park Association helped establish the Man Caves a National park
in nineteen twenty six, and then they just started buying
up farmland all around the area to try to get
(47:17):
all the different entrances to the cave and things like that.
Some of the areas of the cave were actually acquired
via eminent domain and the landowners like said that they
were getting paid, like we're getting paid enough for their
land and things like that. There's people that are still
(47:39):
like mad about like their family getting screwed over from
their land and things like that. But yes, but eventually
this would all form the cave that we know today.
(48:00):
By nineteen fifty four, of Mammoth Cave National Park encompassed
all the lands within the cave area except for two
sort of privately held areas. And that's that's kind of
like what the the the modern the modern national park
(48:27):
that you see today. Sorry I said it was the
national or the Mammoth Cave Park Association when established in
the twenties, but it didn't become a national park until
nineteen forty six.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Oh okay, why did that take so.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Long buying up all the land and things like that.
As I mentioned, in nineteen seventy two, we found they
found that the Mammoth Cave system connected to the Flint
Ridge system, officially making it the longest cave system in
the world.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Right.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
So one of the reasons why man Cave is important
is because of all this history and it's very interesting,
but also because of the biology there Now I've already
mentioned like some of the fossils that can be found there,
but just some of the common fossils, like I have
a picture of like a coral, that are just kind
of like they're just sticking out of the rock. We
(49:36):
find a lot of crinoids, which are sometimes called sea lilies.
They are a lot they are a group of their
lives today, but they're related to sea stars. We find
gastropods like snails. But as I mentioned, there are like
forty species of shark. In fact, there's some that are
(50:00):
like you know, you can't find anywhere else in the world.
Two species were fairly recently described, gilk Mannius caraforum and
trog Localodotus trimbly eye, like I said, are only found
inside the cave. And it's really cool you see, like
you know, some of the pictures of like just like
(50:21):
a tooth from a shark relative shark like animal just
like sticking out of the cave. A lot of these
are in kind of like not easily accessible to the
public areas. Fortunately, Dave, we actually did a video about
us for work in twenty twenty. They found a Cyvodis striatus,
which is a shark about like the size of a
modern great white. It's like a very large shark. I right.
(50:45):
And the thing about these is because the limestone is
pretty hard, so they don't typically like excavate the animals
because this would be really hard to do so, but
they can get like portable scanning equipment in to get
scans of these fossils and things like that. But there
are a lot of living animals. There are cave specialists
(51:10):
that live there, like the cave salamander. There are even
some species of eyeless cavefish so there they never leave
the cave and it's very dark, so they they've lost
their eyes. Yeah, the cave crayfish. They are also cave crickets.
Have you ever seen the cave cricket.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
They've Are they the ones that are like white?
Speaker 1 (51:34):
They they are white, yeah, yeah, like pale, kind of
pale in color. They still have some brown on them.
There's cave crickets that are found out of the world,
but they're like they're often like they're really big and
they look pretty. They look pretty gnarly. I think they're awesome.
There are several species of cave crickets. We actually saw
a few while they were there. I mentioned the cave salamander.
(51:57):
But the thing that is kind of like most import
and about Mammoth Cave are the bats, especially the Indiana bat,
which is a fatterly protected species. But they also have
the gray bat, the little brown bat, the big brown bat,
and the tricolored bat. But a problem with these bats
is something called white nose syndrome. It's contagious and it
(52:22):
does eventually kill the bats. And so because of this,
when you enter the cave, you actually have to wash
your feet when you enter and exit. Oh shit, Cave
sent me a picture of a cave cricket with the
predators face on it.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Yeah, it's pretty sweet, like one ugly.
Speaker 1 (52:44):
Especially way I said to the cave crickets while we
were down there. Yeah, they're very admit about like and
very precise be how you have to wash your your
feet or your boots before you exit the cave. Just
wanted to talk a little bit real quickly about like
just going to Mammoth Cave and what it is like.
(53:04):
So there are some you you have to book a tour.
You can't just like go in the cave on your
own because it could be pretty dangerous.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
To do that. Well, sure, there is.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Uh, there's like a self guided tour that you can
go on where you enter into the what's called the
historic entrance, and again that's like kind of the big
entrance of the cave. You're probably going to see if
you look at a picture of it. And then there
are also guided tours which will take you to deeper
sections of the cave where you can see some of
(53:38):
the kind of named sites like the the you know, uh,
the booths, booths, ampheters, just thank you.
Speaker 2 (53:56):
I got you.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
And those are like guided tours where the the park
ranger will tell you about things. What's really interesting is
one of the things that the ranger did while you
were down there is they actually turned off the lights.
When you turn off the lights, it is completely pitch black.
After a few moments, you cannot tell the difference between
(54:18):
whether your eyes are open and your eyes are closed. Wow,
that's like that's how dark it is. Is. It's just
like it's a darkness that you can't like you kind
of can't comprehend because even like your house, you turn
all the lights, like there's still like different like sources
of light. Sure, but this is this it's so dark.
(54:39):
They warned us that they were gonna do it and
things like that. But the other thing that is like
just the wildest part is the constant fifty four degree temperature,
which I mentioned right, And what happens is you will
get close to one of the entrances and you may
not be able to see the entrance yet, and then
all of a sudden, it was like one hundred degrees
(55:00):
and all of a sudden, it feels like you're in
an air conditioner, Like you're getting blasted from with air conditioning,
like as you're about to enter a building, you know,
like that like the air air curtain, and just because
like that cold air just kind of like comes down
the hill.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
And also what we noticed was in the evening time,
when it was very very humid, clouds formed over the
surface of the cave.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
Oh interesting by the entrance.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
Like you you could see like haze from the cold
air condensing the water vapor into liquid water, and those
droplets coalescing, which is what we call a cloud. Yeah,
absolutely fucking wild. So that's that's I think like the
(55:53):
part that was like the wildest to me. In addition
to the majesty of like these huge rooms which I
can't even really describe pictures don't do it justice, I
would say, because it's pretty hard to take pictures down
there because you cannot use flash photography. Yeah, luckily with
modern like you know, modern cell phones, they've got like
(56:15):
like long exposure photographs. So I took some decent photos,
but like it just really doesn't do it justice. So
kind of just have to go there yourself.
Speaker 2 (56:24):
Damn Well.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
I could ramble on for a lot longer about Mammoth Cave,
but but I will not. But anything else that you
wanted to add, Dave.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
No, just that I would like to go there. I've
wanted to go there for a while, and this is
certainly like reinforcing that.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
I'm sending you some pictures. The one I sent you
is just like what the like looks like in part
of it, and the other one is standing in front
of the entrance where or it's really an exit where
they're sticks exits out of the cave and just a
you know, a few hundred feet to like the right
of us in that photo is where it connects with
(57:08):
the Green River. Sure, but we're standing on like that
deck there, and even though we're outside, we're not in
the cave. You can feel the cold air rushing out
of that hole in the ground, and it felt like
it felt great. Well, I can imagine yeah, and then imagine.
Speaker 2 (57:31):
It gets a little chili at once you've been in
the cave for a while.
Speaker 1 (57:34):
Yeah, And that's actually one of the problems was what
I felt like I was.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
Going to get heat exhaustion.
Speaker 1 (57:40):
Was because we we we were where. I was wearing
pants because I didn't want to be cold in the cave,
and also we'd been in the car. But we got
there and we had to like we it wasn't time
for our tour. We still had like, you know, a
couple hours. So I'm walking around in jeans and I
(58:04):
think I just like got overheated.
Speaker 2 (58:07):
Oh what is this egg? Oh is this a croke? Madame? No, no, no, Dave.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
This is what I wanted to This is what I
think we should close out with.
Speaker 2 (58:19):
Yeah, that's what I ate.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
After we wait, wait, hiked around all afternoon and went
inside the cave and everything that is a Kentucky hot brown.
You know, you know, you know what that Have you
heard of this?
Speaker 2 (58:31):
No?
Speaker 1 (58:31):
It sounds like something a nice lady gives you by
the underneath the interstate.
Speaker 2 (58:35):
That's what it does the Kentucky something you pay extra for.
Speaker 1 (58:42):
The Kentucky hot brown is a is a famous dish
and it is a big piece of Texas toast. This
is a This is a like a sneaky National Delicacies here.
I can maybe go into the history of it if
we if we do know one of those episodes, but.
Speaker 2 (58:59):
Is this would be like a hillbilly crooked madon.
Speaker 1 (59:03):
It's a big piece of Texas toast. Some good smoked turkey,
like sliced. This also had ham. The ham was really fatty.
Speaker 2 (59:15):
I can see that.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
So I I like, I I had like used up
a lot of calories. So I actually it was like
really like enjoying that.
Speaker 2 (59:24):
But I think that.
Speaker 1 (59:26):
The ham I could do without. The turkey is essential, sure,
and then bacon and then the whole fucking thing is
covered in Mornee sauce, which is a Mornai sauce.
Speaker 2 (59:41):
Is a Hillbilly Holidays.
Speaker 1 (59:43):
No, it's not Hillbilly Holidays. It is uh Mornee is
a a bechamel your wife, what Mornee is? Yeah, Morne
is is a derivative of so Holidays is one of
the mother sauces. One of the other mother sauce is bechamel,
which is a flour based root with milk.
Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
Then if you add.
Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
A cheese like Greyere or Swiss, then you get more nee.
So it's a fancy cheese sauce. It's not hillbilly, I
would say. And then to make sure, you know, you
kind of like make it a little healthy, you put
a big fat slice of tomato.
Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Oh oh yeah on there. And also I know that
with a little extra salt, those green beans slap.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Dude, the green bean slapped so hard. Yeah, almost as
almost as goes the hot brown. But you need that tomato.
You need the tomato because otherwise it's like so much
fat and carves it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
It's like it's.
Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Over the edge. But the cool fresh tomato just brings
it back off the cliff just enough that you can
eat it without hating yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
I know exactly what you mean.
Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
Yes, so yeah, So that's that's the Kentucky cot brown
bonus bonus food content in this episode.
Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
Hell yeah, man, that looks great to me.
Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
Well that's all I have to say about Mammoth Cave.
I mean, I could talk for days about like the
geology especially, but I am actually proud of myself. How
brief I kept that part.
Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
No, that was great, I mean, very informative. And then
you know, it did a good job of explaining what
uh you know, a lot of the other things we
talked about, understanding why somebody might think, oh, this will
be a good place for a tuberculous's hospital. You know.
Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
Well uh yeah, I mean it does seem strange, but
there are like you know, actually like you know, large rooms,
and then there was various times where you know, people
like held concerts and.
Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Things in there.
Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
So yeah, hell yeah, man, uh yeah, Well, so go
visit Mamth Cave. Support our National park system, which yep,
you know is very important right now, and Itta Kentucky
Hot Brown.
Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
Yeah, and if you've been to Mammoth k we'd love
to hear about your experience. You know, how to get
a hold of us on Instagram or an Hour of
Our Time podcast at gmail dot com and tell us
about how you saw the tuberculosis huts.
Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
Hell yeah, yep, all right, well buy everyone.
Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Talk to you soon. Thank you for listening to an
Hour of Our Time.
Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
If you like what you heard, explore our catalog of
over two hundred episodes and rate and review us on
your platform of choice.
Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
And If you'd like to support what we do, visit
patreon dot com. Slash an hour of Our time podcast
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