#KING OF HEROES PASS EXPLORERS FIND CAVE FREE#

NPS Photo The Connection that Changed Everything Bottom Row (L-R):Gary Eller and Pat Crowther. The 1972 connection group posing outside of Floyd Collins’ homestead after they exited Mammoth Cave on September 9.īack Row (L-R): John Wilcox, Richard Zoph, Steve Wells, and Cleve Pinnix. This gave the cavers indication they were indeed connected to the Mammoth Cave system, but they couldn’t be sure. During a trip on September 2, 1972, though, a group in the Flint Ridge system found signatures of Leo Hunt and Pete Hanson in a passage that is now known as Hanson’s Lost River. Many trips came and went in the Flint Ridge system with nothing new being found.

The next task for explorers was to connect the two. This meant that all four caves (Crystal, Unknown, Colossal, and Salts) were connected and identified as one: the Flint Ridge Cave system.īefore 1972, the Flint Ridge Cave system was the longest known cave in the world with 86.5 miles (139.2 km) of mapped passageways and the Mammoth Cave System, located one ridge over, was mapped at 57.9 miles (93.2 km) long. Five years later, in 1960, Salts Cave was connected to Colossal Cave and in 1961 Salts Cave was connected to Unknown Cave. The first was in 1955 when Crystal Cave was connected with Unknown Cave. There were three significant cave connections on the Flint Ridge side of the valley that took place between the 1950s and 60s that would pave the road for the famous 1972 connection. It wasn’t until many years later that a famous connection occurred on September 9th, 1972 between two cave systems that changed Mammoth Cave’s history and the world of caving forever. Though none of these pioneering cave explorers knew it, they were, in fact, exploring the longest known cave system in the world. Across the valley, Floyd Collins, an avid caver, discovered Crystal Cave in 1917 and actively explored many other caves within the Mammoth Cave area. It contained huge trunk passage ways and places covered in large, yet very delicate, gypsum deposits.Īnd it wasn’t just Mammoth Cave being explored. In 1938 Pete Hanson, Carl Hanson, Leo Hunt, and Claude Hunt after hours of exploration found an area they named New Discovery.

#KING OF HEROES PASS EXPLORERS FIND CAVE FREE#

He, along with the other guides of his era discovered new passageways to take the many tourists who flocked to visit the dark labyrinth of Mammoth Cave.Īlmost 100 years later in the 1930’s, two well known Mammoth Cave guide families by the names of Hanson and Hunt, frequently explored “lost” passageways in their free time and added to the cave’s known mileage. In modern history, Stephen Bishop, an enslaved Mammoth Cave guide, extended Mammoth Cave’s known length and made one of the first maps in the 1840s. Prehistoric American Indians were the first to enter the cave around 5,000 years ago and explored over 19 miles of cave passage within what is now Mammoth Cave National Park. The hand drawn map of Mammoth Cave by Stephen Bishop was on of the first detailed maps of the cave system.įor thousands of years humans have been entering Mammoth Cave.

King of heroes pass explorers find cave