The Longest Cave [Paperback]

Roger W. Brucker (Author), Professor Richard A. Watson Ph.D. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 16, 1987

In 1925 the geological connection between Flint Ridge and Mammoth Cave was proved when dye placed in a Flint Ridge spring showed up in Echo River at Mammoth Cave.

 

That tantalizing swirl of dye confirmed specula­tions that were to tempt more than 650 cavers over half a century with the thrill of being the first to make human passage of the cave connection. Roger Brucker and Richard Watson tell not only of their own twenty-year effort to complete the link but the stories of many others who worked their way through mud-choked crawlways less than a foot high only to find impenetrable blockages.

 

Floyd Collins died a grisly death in nearby Sand Cave in 1925, after being trapped there for 15 days. The wide press coverage of the rescue efforts stirred the imagination of the public and his body was on macabre display in a glass-topped coffin in Crystal Cave into the 1940s. Agents of a rival cave owner once even stole his corpse, which was re­covered and still is in a coffin in the cave. Modern cavers still have a word with Floyd as they start their downward treks.

 

Brucker and Watson joined the parade of cavers who propelled themselves by wiggling kneecaps, elbows, and toes through quarter-mile long crawlways, clinging by fingertips and boot toes across mud-slick walls, over bottomless pits, into gur­gling streams beneath stone ceilings that descend to water level, down crumbling crevices and up mountainous rockfalls, into wondrous domed halls, and straight ahead into a blackness inten­sified rather than dispelled by the carbide lamps on their helmets.

 

Over two decades they explored the passages with others who sought the final connection as vigorously as themselves. Pat Crowther, a young mother of two, joined them and because of her thinness became the member of the crew to go first into places no human had ever gone before. In that role, in July 1972, she wiggled her way through the Tight Spot and found the route that would link the Flint Ridge and Mammoth Cave systems into one cave extending 144.4 miles through the Kentucky limestone.

 

In a new afterword to this edition the authors summarize the subsequent explorations that have more than doubled the established length of the cave system. Based upon geological evidence, the authors predict that new discoveries will add an­other 200 miles to the length of the world’s longest cave, making it over 500 miles long.

 

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The Longest Cave makes the reader get down on hands and knees, to crawl through the tight spots and the false leads and the boulder slides. But somewhere in the rocks and mud under central Kentucky, the reader becomes self-reliant, begins crawling around the next twist of cave, begins to care.   . . This spare and underwritten book is a primer in self-reliance and self-worth.”—The New York Times

About the Author

Roger W. Brucker is president of Odiorne Indus­trial Advertising. Inc., in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Past president of the Cave Research Foundation, he is an Honorary Life Fellow of the National Speleological Society. He has written adventure and tech­nical articles related to caves and is the co-author of two other books on caving: The Caves Beyond (with Joe Lawrence) and Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins (with Robert K. Murray).

 

Richard A. Watson is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, St. Louis. He is past presi­dent of the Cave Research Foundation, a Fellow of the National Speleological Society, editor of Cave Books, and has published a novel on caving: Under Plowman’s Floor. He has participated as a geolo­gist on paleoclimatological and archaeological expeditions in Kentucky, New Mexico, Iran, Turkey, and the Yukon.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press; 1st edition (February 16, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809313227
• ISBN-13: 978-0809313228
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,050,426 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The All-time Number One Cave Adventure Book, May 29, 1998

By 

John ([e-mail]) (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Longest Cave (Paperback)

Caves have been intertwined with Kentucky history since a man named Houchins chased a bear into Mammoth cave in the late 1700s. Later on, the valley north of Mammoth Cave was named after this early settler, and the ridge north of Houchins' Valley was called Flint Ridge. Starting in the early 1950s a group of cavers began a lifelong ambition of connecting the caves on the northern ridge (Flint Ridge) to the caves on the southern ridge (Mammoth Cave Ridge). Their goal was simple: To map the Longest Cave. This book covers that time. Along with 'The Caves Beyond' and 'Trapped', this book constitutes an informal trilogy about Mammoth Cave. It is a story of determination over hardship, of perseverence over fatigue, of triumph over nature. Roger Brucker and Red Watson write this book with the confidence of people that were there. From the very beginning, their influence on the project helped mold it into what it was to become. We see them age, from young men in their ealry twenties, to grizzled Flint Ridge veterans to seeing their children caving alongside them. There is a real sense of the passage of time here; people come, people go, the cave is eternal. Fiction should hope to be so true. Dominating all this is the cave. It is all pervading. Over three hundred miles of passage lies under their feet, and the reader fells as if he is crawling, climbing and squirming along with them. We feel the explorer's chill they wade through Hanson's Lost River, we feel their pain as they crawl through Agony Avenue. We satand alongside them as they are awed by the vastness and remoteness of Unknown Cave. Above all else, it is the story of the people who explore the cave. For fourty years, cavers have been gathering in Central Kentucky to explore this cave. To mankind, the cave is eternal. We may choos to protect it, we may, in our ignorance deface it. Either way, we live our lives by interacting with it. Or to put it in the books words: "That is where life is, that is where your friends are".

Read this b! ook.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating tale of cave exploration limits, January 23, 2004

By 

Jerald R Lovell (Clinton Township, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Longest Cave (Paperback)

I bought this book about 15 years ago while visiting Mammoth Cave National Park. I still enjoy rereading it from time to time. It is the sort of book one hates to see end.

The book narrates the history of the discovery that Kentucky's Flint Ridge-Mammoth Cave system of caves is by far the world's longest known series of continuously-connected caverns. The writers and their many cohorts are not only daring adventurers, but a collection of cavers who deeply appreciate the mystery, beauty and science of caves.

A very interesting part of the book is the well-developed character sketches of the many explorers, a good number of whom participated in parts of the long, arduous struggle to discover the connections between five different large caves so as to make them one.

The overriding star of the show is the cave system itself, and the book contains many facinating portions about the beauty, danger, wonder, and history of the things found there by explorers dating back to prehistoric Native Americans, forward.

After a frustrating series of events, including an initial startling lack of interest/resistance by National Park personnel, progress begins to be made in leaps and bounds. When the Ohio cavers find that the Flint Ridge system is the longest then know, an effort is taken up to connect it with Mammoth Cave.

In a spine-tingling narrative about going past the "Tight Spot", a very small passage, the cavers eventually make the connection by going down in Flint Ridge and emerging in a well-known Mammoth Cave tourist gallery. The sense of truiumph and relief is overwhelming and excellently captured.

My size and age prohibit me from doing the things described in this book, and I have never done them. But I was captivated from start to finish by the story of these brave, resourceful people and the cave system they explored and charted. It is as if I am there myself.

My only quibble is that the photographs are limited and in black and white, but the excellent descriptive writing overcomes this factor. I love the book. Very, very highly recommended.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating, awe-inspiring, and incredibly exciting, July 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Longest Cave (Paperback)

If you like adventure, if you like caves, if you like drama and suspense, or if you breath in and out regularly and have a pulse, you really ought to read this book. The story of the years it took to connect the Flint Ridge/Mammoth cave systems, it sweeps the reader into the wonderfully obsessive world of the Flint Ridge Cavers. A great book. Strongly reccomended.