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Published: August 17th 2023
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Yesterday we began a nearly 5 week journey that we had long planned, following the course of the now famous Lewis and Clark Journey of Discovery in 1803-6. At the request of his friend, president Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis put together a brave company of men to explore the newly purchased Louisiana Purchase, surely one of the greatest real estate deals of all time. More on that exploratory mission starting with my next post. But we started with an opportunity to see another of America's great national parks on the way to the starting point of our real journey. We needed a stopping point in Kentucky because the drive to St. Louis would have been too long. The choice was between Mammoth Cave National Park and Buffalo Trace Distillery. We chose the park, although I am not sure that was the right choice.
After spending the night in Bowling Green, we drove in the early morning to Mammoth Cave and awaited our entrance time with a guiding ranger. He turned out to be an entertaining for teacher who originated in the area, and his down-home humor kept us entertained. We had previously been to Carlsbad Caverns and other caves, but
found Mammoth to be quite different. The underlying geology for most limestone caves we have seen has been the gradual erosion of the soluble limestone by the constantly transit of water from above, resulting in flowstone, stala
gmites (grow up from the
ground), stala
ctites (grow down from the
ceiling), and columns (formed when stalactites and stalagmites meet somewhere in the middle. But Mammoth is different. Lying atop the limestone layer is a layer of hard caprock that water does not penetrate easily. Thus the are very few features in Mammoth formed as evaporative products of dropping water in which limestone has been dissolved. In fact, the interior is just large caverns with vast amounts of fractured and collapsed rock, virtually devoid of interesting visual features.
The cave does have some points of interest. For a starter, it is the longest cave system in the world, with at least 426 mapped miles, and more being added every year. It is a World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve. After a somewhat tortuous ownership battle, it became a National Park on July 1, 1941. The cave contains several species only found in caves, such as sightless crayfish and fish, and at
least one species of shrimp found nowhere else on earth. Most of these are out of sight of visitors since they exist in an underground river which is now closed to visitation since studies showed visitation was causing dwindling numbers of the rare species.
The cave has a lot history of human habitation/visitation. Several thousand years of Native American presence have been documented, as they changed from hunter-gatherers to an agricultural society. Subsequently there is a long history of tourist visits, and for a while in the mid 1800's it was used as a Tb sanitarium, which failed completely. During the early 1800's, it was used as a mine for calcium nitrate (also known as Norwegian saltpeter), used in gunpowder manufacture. Remnants of those mining ventures are still visible to the visitor.
From the standpoint of the modern visitor, in my view there is relatively little to see. There are large dimly lit spaces, but as mentioned there are none of the fantasy inspiring watery formations such as you see elsewhere. There are remnants of the mining, which are remarkably preserved given their antiquity. There are a couple of structures built in connection with the failed Tb sanitarium,
but the lingering memories of the cave for many will be just the difficulties in navigating sections such as Fat Man's Misery and Tall Man's Misery, both appropriately named, and the climbing of the final tower of steps to exit the cave, finishing a grueling 540 stairs throughout the tour.
Overall, we enjoyed having seen the cave, but were unanimous in feeling that a return visit would not be worthwhile, and that it was not nearly so interesting as Carlsbad and other cave systems.
Tomorrow, we are off to start our Journey of Discovery in the footsteps (or maybe oar sweeps) of William Clark and Meriwether Lewis.
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