Cave Without a Name by Stormy on July 01, 2005
You figure that if something wasn’t named, it wasn’t significant enough to warrant a name, but that’s not always the case!
First thing in the morning we headed out to visit the Cave Without a Name. No kidding. That’s its real name. The cave is a commercial venture, a little off the beaten path, down a dirt road. It’s well worth the efforts!
We got there early enough that the place was empty, except for the manager and the caretaker. We visited with them in the gift shop. The manager was a member of the National Speleological Society, as are my handlers, so there was a lot of instant camaraderie. Everyone socialized for a bit, than the manager took us on a private tour, not waiting for the guides or other tourists to arrive. NSS members are really cool to one another that way.
So why is it a Cave Without a Name? That’s always the big first question that gets addressed. It turns out that the cave entrance pit was discovered when a goat fell in to the opening somewhere around the year 1900. Curious locals looked into the cave, but not much happened and the cave remained unused until the Prohibition when the landowner used it to house his moonshine distillery.
It was sometime after Prohibition had ended that the owner decided to commercialize the cave. He held a contest to have the cave named and one of the entries came from a child who said that the cave is just too beautiful to have a name. And so it was named.
We really got a no holds barred tour of the cave with an opportunity to poke into some corners that are off the commercial route and because we had a ton of photographic equipment, the manager played with the cave’s built in commercial lighting to give us an opportunity for some of the best shots possible. We spent about two hours exploring the cave and learning a lot about its history and geology and walked out with some four hundred amazing pictures.
After the cave tour, we also got a tour of the property, including short visits to Cricket Cave, Yogi Pit, Boo Boo Pit and the Pit Without a Name. It was a wonderful morning full of exploration.
| |