Historic Highlights

Below the Surface

By Amy Leinbach Marquis

In the depths of Mammoth Cave National Park, visitors walk with heads lowered, feeling their way along a crooked path that winds through dark, narrow passageways. The air is cool and moist, and the ranger's last story hangs in the air, sustained, like notes, in the previous chamber. Famous people have walked this path: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jenny Lind, Elton John, and others whose names are written in soot on smooth, sandstone ceilings.

Suddenly the tunnel opens up into a grand rotunda reaching heights of 60 feet, where massive walls echo with memories of elaborate banquets, dancehalls, weddings, and the first ever "air-conditioned" Methodist church service. Years ago, musicians fresh out of school and desperate for work hauled clunky instruments through the same tiny spaces to perform for visitors, in hopes of being discovered and touring with the wealthy. Nineteenth-century women—without husbands in tow—crawled through cave dirt to reach this spot, finding liberation from a stifling society in a most unlikely way.

But perhaps the most fascinating story belongs to the early cave guides: slaves. "Mammoth Cave doesn't jump into your mind as an African-American park, but it's a primary story here," says Joy Medley Lyons, chief of program services at the park.

This cave system, spanning 350 miles (and counting), lies beneath Western Kentucky's karst landscape and formed hundreds of millions of years ago, well before dinosaurs ruled the earth. After the Woodland Indians, there were few permanent residents in the area until the late 1700s when explorers like Daniel Boone pushed farther west. Settlers soon learned that the region offered a valuable commodity: nitrate-rich cave dirt, or saltpeter, used to produce gunpowder and preserve meat before the dawn of refrigerators.

The first official owner of Mammoth Cave claimed a 200-acre federal land grant in 1798, like many Americans setting out to own a slice of the "American Dream." Small-scale saltpeter mining operations began and continued with subsequent owners. When England blocked America's ports before the War of 1812, production went into high gear, allowing the nation to defend itself despite being cut off from the rest of the world.

After the war, saltpeter operations slowed to a halt, but Mammoth Cave held promise as a tourist attraction. In 1839, Dr. John Croghan, a brilliant businessman with a medical degree and a hearty sense of adventure, purchased the cave—and with it, Stephen Bishop, a slave who was a cave guide under his previous owner. They quickly began converting the home that had housed the managers of the mining operation into the spacious Mammoth Cave Hotel, with plans to build on the entertainment appeal below ground, too.

But Croghan's push for fame came to a halt in 1842 when he decided to pursue a subterranean hospital for tuberculosis patients, hoping that constant cave temperatures and moist air would cure their disease. About a dozen patients moved underground, living there in huts built of stone and wood. The project failed after two years.

Bishop, along with two other slaves, continued leading tours in the cave, charming celebrities and rich European tourists who flocked to this spectacular place. Visitors often left as enthralled by their smart, gracious, well-spoken guide as they were by the cave. The guides, Bishop in particular, were quite observant and eager to learn. "They were hearing conversations about culture and government, food and clothing styles--things that my own white ancestors in Owensboro, Kentucky, weren't hearing a darn thing about," Lyons says.

In time, the guides began pushing the limits of exploration, seeking out new passageways with little more than a candle to light the way. One visitor challenged Bishop to take him somewhere no one else had gone. Recalling a treacherous drop-off that he'd once encountered, Bishop lugged a ladder into the cave, positioned it over the gaping hole, and crossed to the other side with his visitor. That breakthrough opened up a whole new wing of the cave that had never been explored.

The deeper they pushed, the more bizarre their discoveries became: eyeless fish; translucent crickets; gypsum that took the form of flowers, cottony tufts, and delicate tendrils. Guides learned to identify these cave dwellers by inviting scientists on tours, sharing their newfound knowledge with the cave visitors that followed.

In 1849, Croghan died from tuberculosis, leaving the cave to his nieces and nephews. Seven years later, Bishop was given his freedom, as requested in Croghan's will. But Bishop had little time to savor it; he died the following year. Mat Bransford, another prominent slave guide, continued to lead tours—a family legacy that would last 101 years.

In 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation designating Mammoth Cave as a national park, but five years would pass before its dedication ceremony, delayed because of World War II. A few families from the original homesteads relocated nearby, and to this day their descendents keep close ties to the park.

"There's so much here," Lyons says. "It's not just cave mileage waiting to be discovered. There are people waiting to be rediscovered."

Amy Leinbach Marquis is assistant editor for National Parks magazine.