Mammoth Cave National Park, KY

Caves hold a mysterious allure for me. How did they form? What unusual things are down there? Who’s explored it? Bonus: Caves stay cool on a hot summer day.

When I realized we’d pass close to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky on our July road trip, I immediately added it to our itinerary. My Mom and I were traveling from Texas to Pennsylvania to see family while my husband served overseas.

After touring the cave, I can say with confidence if you’re stationed at Ft. Knox, Ft. Campbell or Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee, add this cave to your bucket list.

Mammoth Hole in the Ground

Mammoth Cave consists of 426 miles of explored passages and many more to be discovered. That makes it the longest cave system in the world. At certain points, it’s also about 400 feet deep.

In this hilly part of Kentucky rivers like the Green and Nolin that flow through the park above ground allow water to sink down into the rock and slowly erode both large and small passages underground. Eventually underground streams like the River Styx continued eroding the rock. Stalactites, flowstone and underground canyons formed.

Cave tours steal the attention of most visitors but the park also offers miles of hiking above ground along with boating, horseback riding, boating, fishing and camping. Rangers regularly run special events like the Night Sky Program.

If camping’s not your thing, grab a room at The Lodge at Mammoth Cave. Meals are made easy at the nearby The Green River Restaurant, The Lantern Cafe and the Maple Springs Coffee & Gift Shop.

Spelunking We Go

Because we were on a tight schedule, I’d already researched the park and knew we wanted to take the historic cave tour. It seemed like the best of both worlds—amazing cave formations and fascinating history.

Honestly none of the tours offered today look exactly like what we did years ago. I’m going to guess our tour was similar to today’s “Extended Historic Tour” which lasts about 2.25 hours, is two miles long and involves climbing 540 stairs. I’ll highlight some of the most interesting parts of our adventure.

We met our tour guide at the visitor center and our group walked down the path to the cave’s impressive entrance. A bit of water dripped from above the cave and disappeared into the darkness below. As we walked down the steep steps toward the cave’s mouth, our guide shared a bit of the cave’s early history, telling us it formed thousands of years ago. Native Americans used the first three levels for mining, drawing pictographs and burials well before anyone else knew of the cave’s existence.

Eventually American settlers moved into the area and discovered the cave. It would play an important role in the War of 1812 as a mine. Slaves extracted saltpeter or potassium nitrate from the cave that was then shipped to Delaware to make black gunpowder that helped the Americans win the war.

The slaves that mined the saltpeter made the first trails inside the labyrinth underground. The owner of Mammoth Cave made a lot of money until about 1815 when the war ended. Eventually mining stopped and the cave opened for tours.

One of the more intriguing parts of the tour took us to Gothic Avenue where the rock formations resembled, well, Gothic architecture. But I found the graffiti on the ceiling fascinating. Cave tourists over the years used tallow candles that created a black, greasy smoke. They discovered attaching the candles to long poles allowed them to make dots on the cave ceiling and eventually spell their names. To leave this graffiti the writer needed a significantly larger time commitment that a few minutes with spray paint can.

In 1811 someone started the graffiti trend. Now the cave has over 10,000 pieces of signature graffiti. And, no, the park service no longer allows visitors to sign their names on the cave ceiling.

Next we came upon an underground tuberculosis hospital. As odd as that sounds, doctors thought the air in the caves might help tuberculosis patients heal. Dr. John Croghan purchased cave for an astonishing $10,000 in 1839 and built his underground hospital.

Sixteen patients arrived in late 1842. Unfortunately this highly communicable disease wouldn’t be curable until 1943 when scientists discovered a special antibiotic that killed the bacteria.

Several of Dr. Croghan’s patients died in the cave and he shut down the hospital. Today you can see the remains of the stone buildings.

Moving on we eventually crossed The Bottomless Pit. In the old days, tour guides used to throw rocks or even torches into the pit to show visitors how it appeared to be bottomless. We now know it’s actually 105 deep, but thinking of it as The Bottomless Pit is more fun.

Next we squeezed through Fat Man’s Misery, a stone passage that’s only two feet across in places. This goes on for about 100 feet. Thankfully everyone on our tour made it through!

Eventually we got to see the River Styx, an underground river that’s viewed with battery operated lanterns because there’s no electricity in this part of the cave. Above ground, you can hike the River Styx Trail, an easy .4 mile trip to see where the underground river surfaces as a spring that eventually empties into the Green River.