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EXPLORING
KENTUCKY - December 2004 by Katherine Tandy Brown Horsin' Around Underground "My mother doesn’t like caves,” laughed Peggy Nims, head of marketing and community relations for the American Cave Conservation Association (ACCA) in Horse Cave, Kentucky. “My father and grandfather were both cave explorers and cavers. It skipped a generation and I got a double dose!” Her laugh echoed off the walls of Hidden River Cave, where she leads tours for the American Cave Museum, a treasure of a resource chock full of speleological (cave-related) information. “Caves are magical places, and water is the greatest sculptor in nature,” she said. “You’ll see creatures down here you won’t see anywhere else.” On an hour-long tour, I followed Nims down into the terraced sinkhole lush with flowers, ferns and ivy at the gaping entrance to an underground cavern system once known as Horse Cave back when its waterway furnished the town’s water supply. In its cool dampness I saw crawfish as opalescent as the cricket; stood at the confluence of the east and south branches of a now-clean river once so polluted by groundwater runoff it was closed in 1943 for 50 years; and gaped at the remains of a hydroelectric system that made Horse Cave the second city in the state with electricity. In 1887, Dr. G.A. Thomas, a dentist who bought the cave for $375, installed its first waterworks, soon adding a stone dam, an electrical generator and steps. He opened the well-lit marvel to tourists in 1916, when Hidden River’s water was so pure that its colorless, eyeless cavefish would sometimes shoot out of townspeople’s faucets. After a massive cleanup effort – the greatest cave restoration in the nation – and implementation of better disposal of area wastewater, the fish have returned and water quality is constantly monitored. In 1993, the City of Horse Cave and the ACCA partnered to reopen the cave and open the Smithsonian-quality museum, built to teach people how to live in this cave-rich region without damaging its natural caverns. In addition to one-hour tours, guides lead two- and three-hour Caving Adventure Tours by reservation for those who want to don gear, crawl through tunnels and get muddy. “Our goal is for people to experience the resource,” said Nims, “to have a feeling for the essence of the cave eco-system, to listen to the water and put a hand in it, to see a crawfish or a blindfish, to feel that puff of cold air, to sit in the dirt.” In 1926, national media focused on Kentucky’s cave country, one of the two largest karst areas in the world, and the futile rescue efforts to save Floyd Collins, a local spelunker trapped 60 feet underground for two weeks. (Spelunker is a slang term for people who go in caves without complete knowledge or preparation.) “On our tours,” Nims says, “we teach cave safety. We prefer to be called cavers. Spelunkers tend to be rescued by cavers. Collins was a spelunker. We learned a lot of things not to do while caving from (him).” His sad but intriguing story is but one of the museum’s myriad exhibits, including Native Americans who lived in natural air-cooled comfort 5,000 years ago, saltpeter mining during the Civil War, the “Kentucky Cave Wars” some say were dirtier than the state’s politics, the odd array of cave-dwelling animals and of microbes that can be used to treat disease, and a life-size cave with stalactites and stalagmites. Thousands of kids visit to learn about underground mysteries in collaboration with a school curriculum the museum generates. “On the eco-trip I lead, I get a lot of young people who’ve never done anything like this, who’ve maybe been told they can’t for whatever reason, maybe they’re overweight or not particularly agile,” Nims said. “The kids come here, take the tour and are so excited and amazed that they could do it. It gives them a real sense of success. I mean, how do you put a price tag on that?” In July, construction began on a $3.7 million expansion that will make the facility the world’s largest museum of caves. Earlier in 2004, thanks to a $176,455 grant from the Kentucky Heritage Land Conservation Fund, the city of Horse Cave purchased an additional mile of the cave that includes the magnificent 200-foot-high, 200-foot-wide Sunset Dome, an enormous version of the 85-foot-high dome on the current tour. Want to warm up on a cold winter day? Hidden River Cave is a constant 56 degrees. Visit it and the museum year-round, seven days a week, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and until 7 p.m. Memorial Day through Labor Day. Find out more at www.cavern.org or call (270) 786-1466.
Katherine Tandy
Brown is a staff writer for The Lane Report. |
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Copyright 1996-2004, by Kentucky Business Online. All rights reserved. Editorial content
is copyright 2004, Lane Communications Group The Lane Report is a trademark of Lane Communications Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
