The Kentucky Cave Wars: The Strange Fight Beneath Mammoth Cave

Podcast Transcript

In the early 20th century, the caves of Kentucky became the center of a bitter underground gold rush.

At the heart of it all was Mammoth Cave, a prize so valuable that men risked their fortunes, their reputations, and even their lives to control a piece of it.

The struggle eventually turned deadly and helped shape the future of one of America’s greatest natural wonders.

Learn more about the Kentucky Cave Wars on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The story of the Kentucky Cave Wars is one of tourism gone wrong, centered on the world’s largest cave system, Mammoth Cave.

The Mammoth Cave system is the world’s longest known cave system. It is over 426 miles or 685 kilometers long, which is 1.5 times the length of the next-largest cave system. That value isn’t even a definitive number, as there are still parts of the cave that have yet to be explored.

The cave is located in South Central Kentucky. The majority of the system is currently located within Mammoth Cave National Park, established in 1941.

The cave began developing around 330 million years ago. It is believed to have once been part of an ancient sea, with the rocks and fossil evidence found there supporting this theory.

The cave’s walls are composed of early Carboniferous limestone, shale, dolomite, and siltstone, and are covered by a layer of sandstone. This sedimentary makeup had made the cave walls remarkably stable.

Anthropologists were able to identify Native American remains inside the cave dating to roughly 5000 years ago. They were found in a mummified state, suggesting that they were placed in the cave as part of a burial practice.

The first written record of the cave system dates to the 1790s, after a man named Thomas Lang Jr. was sold the land. It is believed that the cave wasn’t discovered by settlers until 1797.

The legend behind the European discovery of the system goes as follows: John or Francis Houchin was hunting in the area when one of them found a bear. One of the Houchins decided to follow the bear to the cave’s opening, and voilà, the Mammoth Cave System was discovered.

Now, whether or not this was the actual discovery of the cave system is up for debate. Plenty of caves surrounding the Mammoth System had already been discovered, one being as close as a mile away. However, as far as we know, this was the best guess we have.

In 1798, the land where the cave’s entrance was located was surveyed and registered by Valentine Simon, who then began exploring the cave for its saltpeter reserves, which were used to manufacture gunpowder.

Throughout the early 1800s, the cave became an important military resource for its saltpeter, making it a lucrative asset for its owners.

Over the course of the century, ownership of the cave changed hands a few times, but one notable owner was Franklin Gorin, who bought it in 1838.

At this point, the need for saltpeter had lessened, so Gorin had the idea to turn the cave into a tourist attraction. He planned to use his slaves as tour guides to show visitors around.

One of these slaves was Stephen Bishop, who is one of the main reasons we have so much information about the caves. While forced to guide tourists around, Bishop created detailed maps of the cave and named many notable features within the system.

Gorin eventually sold the cave and the enslaved people who worked there to John Croghan, who was a doctor. For a brief period, Croghan attempted to run a tuberculosis hospital out of it. This was a very bad idea, as Croghan eventually caught tuberculosis from this endeavor and died.

Following Croghan’s passing, Bishop was sent to a plantation in Louisville, Kentucky. While at this plantation, Bishop drew a map of the cave from memory, which was later published in a book in 1844. Unlike the work of many slaves, Bishop was given credit for the recording, which was the main one used for the next forty years.

The map was reportedly very accurate despite lacking modern technology. While the cave’s distances and dimensions may have been slightly off, the topography and branch connections were highly accurate.

Interestingly, when the Mammoth Cave system was discovered to be connected to the Flint Ridge Cave System over a century later in 1972, it was found that Bishop had recorded the passage on the map.

Fast forwarding to the Cave Wars.

The Kentucky Cave Wars began in the late 19th century. By this point, the Mammoth Cave was already one of the most popular American tourist attractions. The cave was visited primarily by wealthy travelers who had arrived by train or stagecoach to witness its marvels.

Meanwhile, many locals in the surrounding Appalachian region were living in poverty and saw an opportunity to own and operate a show cave.

This was a tempting idea for the locals, as there was little opportunity to earn money outside the tourism industry. Many people hoped to capitalize on this, and it became a competition to find the next big cave entrance to promote. This meant that by the 1920s, there were dozens of different show caves run by different people.

Those operating the show caves were incredibly competitive, and many of the region’s owners resorted to shady tactics to win as many tourist dollars as possible. If you were unwilling to go above and beyond to find and promote a cave, you would not succeed.

To be a cave operator, you couldn’t just have any old cave entrance; they needed some pizzazz or flair to attract tourists. To be successful, the goal was to find an entrance with mineral deposits, stalactites, or stalagmites.

Location was also important. Caves closer to the railroad line were more profitable because of the ease of access. Some of the earliest competitors to the Mammoth Cave, such as the Diamond Caverns and the Hundred Dome Cave, were popular for their easy access and the fabulous formations within them.

The opportunity for cave owners expanded after the invention of the automobile. In the early 20th century, cars became increasingly popular, and suddenly, being located on the railroad line mattered less. This meant that other fabulous caves in the region had a chance to compete because people could actually reach them.

These entrepreneurs quickly learned that to profit from their cave, they needed to be connected to the main Mammoth Cave system. Tourists did not come to the Mammoth area to see any old cave; they wanted to see one connected to the source. Therefore, if you wanted to make money, finding a back entrance to Mammoth Cave was the best way to go.

The first major competitor to the main Mammoth Cave entrance was Colossal Cavern. Opening in the early 20th century, Colossal Cavern was considered about equal in size to the main Mammoth Cave entrance. The owners of Colossal Cavern were also ambitious and sought to connect their cave system to the Mammoth cave system to create a second entry point that could rival the main mammoth entrance.

Unfortunately for the Colossal Cavern owners, they were never able to blast their way to the Mammoth system. Later research showed they were actually very close to breaking through, but because they never did, the cave’s popularity fizzled out.

However, this idea inspired another cave entrepreneur, George Morrison. Like the owners of Colossal Cavern, Morrison wanted to break into the Mammoth Cave system, open a secondary entrance, and profit from it.

Instead of blindly digging like those at the colossal cavern, Morrison physically searched through the mammoth cave system to find a potential exit point into his cave.

To do so, he bribed a guide at Mammoth for a map and began searching. By 1922, he had opened the second entrance to Mammoth Cave, and this was when the cave wars truly began.

At the main Mammoth Cave entrance, the owners felt as though the competition was trying to steal their business, so they needed to fight back.

It became commonplace for “cappers” to be hired to push people to visit a specific cave. The term “cappers” was used to define the ruthless ticket vendors who intercepted tourist vehicles and pushed people to visit the cave they owned or worked at.

To advertise their caves, cappers used a variety of drastic methods.

One method used by cappers was to dress as police officers to steer tourists away from the main entrance to Mammoth Cave. They would park on roads leading to Mammoth Cave and claim it was closed, often citing a quarantine. From there, they would attempt to direct the tourists to their own cave.

Other cappers would pose as tourists and hype up the cave they worked for. The goal was to drum up excitement for their own tour and keep others from the main cave entrance.

Another method used by the cappers who dressed as tourists was to spread a rumor of a major fire in Mammoth Cave and recommend a detour to their entrance.

There were some other extreme measures taken, for example, when boats were going down the river towards the Mammoth System. To deter tourists from visiting the main mammoth cave entrance, some cappers would throw rocks at incoming boats.

Other extreme measures included blocking roads, vandalizing enemy cave entrances, and burning down the competition’s ticket booths.

An extreme method employed by cappers was to approach tourists and tell them that all the cave entrances were the same because they were connected to the same system. While this was not true, the rumor was enough to prompt some tourists to change their minds about going through the main Mammoth entrance and to choose one of the smaller caves.

In an effort to protect their money, the owners of the main mammoth cave entrance went to court and claimed that other cave owners, specifically Morrison, were using the name of their cave as an advertisement for their entrances, which they argued was illegal advertising.

For tourists, the confusion around the mammoth cave system was incredibly frustrating; they would be bombarded with signs and people telling them to visit caves with nearly identical names. Well, this was intentional by the cave operators as it made it difficult to actually visit their intended destination.

Competition became violent on one occasion in 1921, when an argument broke out between employees from competing caves. The argument ended with one of the employees shooting and killing him.

The Kentucky Cave Wars reached their peak in 1925, around an entrepreneur named Floyd Collins.

Collins and his family had previously owned Crystal Cave. His family had invested a lot of money in Crystal Cave and failed, so in hopes of regaining that money and more, Collins decided to go searching for a new one to operate out of known as Sand Cave.

While exploring inside the Sand Cave, he got stuck in a narrow passage and was pinned to the ground by a rock. The media became fascinated by the story and went to the cave to cover it. With the media there, more people flocked to the Kentucky caves, bringing national attention to the entire situation.

Collins died in the cave, and his body was removed 18 days later. You would think his death would lead to people taking a pause in their search for caves, but the reality of the situation was quite the opposite.

If anything, the cappers in Kentucky tried to profit from the gruesome nature of his death. The new owners of Crystal Cave exhumed Collins’ body and displayed it in 1927. The glass coffin, placed inside the cave, became a popular tourist attraction.

When the United States declared Mammoth Cave a national park in 1941, it believed it would mark the end of the cave wars, but this didn’t happen.

Instead, private owners in Kentucky would try to compete with the national Park for attention. This continued for roughly another 20 years until the cave war officially ended in the 1960s. By that point, it has become more beneficial for cappers to work with Mammoth Cave National Park as a cross-promotion strategy.

The Kentucky Cave Wars were a strange chapter in American history, but they were also a very human one. They were about ambition, poverty, tourism, deception,and the desire to control something wondrous hidden beneath the ground.

Today, Mammoth Cave is protected as a national park, but its preservation came only after decades of chaos, competition, and sacrifice.