Going Underground

Horse Cave, Onyx Cave, Diamond Caverns, American Caverns, Outlaw Cave, Lost River Cave, Hidden River Cave, Mammoth Caverns…the Who’s Who of undergrounds in Kentucky’s “karstlands” (caves, sink holes, springs, and subterranean rivers) seems endless.

While many caves sound appealing and some are heavily advertised (their brochures and billboards bursting with exclamation points like some kind of stalactites for sentences), I decide to spend my time at Mammoth Caves National Park—a place many friends have recommended.

Admission is forever free (a stipulation of the land sale to the feds in the 1940s), but I’ll bet that far more money is made by the cave tours than could ever have been gained by entry fees. They run tours all day long, all days of the week. This park is so popular that the visitor’s center has five counters for selling tickets, with a cordoned pathway that moves the queue as well as any Disneyland ride.

Tours vary by the formations shown, miles and time covered, size of group allowed (some over a 100 people!), standard vs specialty tour, elevation change, and difficulty of maneuverability within the caverns. Most are ranger led, although one is self-guided. The carefully staggered schedules usually enable folks to catch more than one tour in the same day, sometimes three or four. Ka-ching!

The Mammoth cave system is the considered the longest continuous cave in the world, currently mapped at 365 miles of multilayered, interconnecting passageways—some big enough for a lumbering mammoth to throw its tusks around in (no, they didn’t live here), and some so narrow that cavers must push out all the air from their lungs before squeezing through.

A map of the public portion of Mammoth Caves.

The Grand Avenue, a highly popular 4.5-hour visit that goes through the main portion of the public caves and is the longest of the standard tours at 4 miles, looks mighty enticing. (The size of this part of the caverns is what gave Mammoth Caves its name).

I decide, however, on three others for my time and tour bucks: Violet City Lantern Tour (shown by lantern light only, 3 hours); New Entrance Tour (short but with some of the more spectacular crystal formations, 2 hours); and Introduction to Caving (a chance to crawl around and get really dirty, 3.5 hours). I split them up over the time I’m here; other tours and other caves will just have to wait until I’m in this area again.


Ranger-guides Alan and Liz distribute 10 kerosene lamps among 38 of us on the Violet Lantern Tour. Not everyone gets a lamp, so they stress that family units keep track of each other in the caves. A wrong turn or momentary digression to peek down another path, and…well, not good.

As the only solo traveler in the group, I ask for someone to hook in with, and I’m kindly adopted by Kathy, son Paul, and husband Bill, from a small town near Dayton, Ohio. Kathy and I spend a lot of the time in between stops chattering like old friends, and I’m sorry to say goodbye to them all when the tour is through.

Among many interesting rooms, this tour passes through a portion of cave that was once used as—get this—a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. The thinking of the day was that the constant temperature (about 54 degrees) and the caves’ natural air exchange would be good for the patients.

So hospital beds were brought in, a doctor hired, a couple of clinic buildings built deep in the tunnels. And to top it off, public cave tours continued right on through the hospital, with TB-suffering patients reaching out to visitors from their beds. Consumption as a souvenir, anyone? The dark, damp environment didn’t do much to help the TB patients, either. They died within a year.

Saltpeter filters; the mineral was collected in the 1800s to make gunpowder.

The march of the lanterns.

A TB hospital building.

The aptly named Cloud Room.

A stone of many markings, possibly acting as a guide post. A vague image of a pictograph figure is near the base of the rock.

Story and break time.

Only a light can reveal any footsteps made here.

Spent reed canes found in the caverns.

Smoke writing was a common way to leave one’s mark on ceilings.

The New Entrance Tour starts at the “newest” entrance from the surface, discovered in the 1920s (ya gotta love the imagination of the folks who named these things). Shortly after passing the doors that lock out the summer heat and lock in the cool of the caves, our afternoon group is walking down a nearly vertical crevice on a narrow, steep, steel stairway that echoes and clangs underfoot.

It took a submarine contractor to successfully build the thing—they were not allowed to alter the crevice in any way, so the stairs wind ingeniously through the rock. This spectacular descent is a little hard to take in, as the group must keep moving. But it’s amazing to stop and look up and wonder how the heck people got down to explore this cave without the stairs in the first place.

The million-dollar stairwell.

Through million-year-old rock.

The New Entrance area has more living formations than other parts of Mammoth that are open to the public. The water table dropped eons ago, leaving the upper tunnels and caverns dry. Here, however, enough water seeps down that crystals are still collecting.

Not sky: ceiling.

Part of the Frozen Niagara formation (Public Attraction Rule No. 1: name it after something already well known, and more people will come see it).

Liz turns out all the lights and uses a Bic lighter to show what it would have been like exploring the caves with a reed torch. She has us all sit very, very quietly to experience the silence…which is broken within two seconds by the echoing wail of an infant in the group. We all laugh.