Floyd Collins Sand Cave EarthCache

A short trail will lead you to the entrance to Sand Cave. Sand Cave is probably most famous as the place where veteran cave explorer Floyd Collins in 1925 was pinned by a rock and trapped in the cave, eventually perishing despite a large and well publicized rescue operation. This sad episode credited with focusing a great deal of national attention to Mammoth Caves.

William “Floyd” Collins was exploring Sand Cave in 1925, when a rock lodged on his leg and he became trapped. A frantic rescue effort followed, which became a major media event. Newspaper and radio updates followed the progress, and a reporter actually crawled into the cave and interviewed him while he was trapped! Thousands of people came to the rescue site. So many showed up that vendors set up concessions and souvenir stands and a carnival-like atmosphere ensued. The rescue effort failed when the cave ceiling collapsed between him and the rescuers. They could no longer provide him with food and warmth, they frantically get digging, but Floyd died a few days later of starvation and exposure. His body was later removed and displayed for tourists in Crystal Cave, which he had discovered. When the Park Service purchased Crystal Cave, his family requested his body be moved, so it is now buried in the cemetery at the Mammoth Cave Baptist Church.

The Collins family owned Crystal Cave, a tourist cave in the same general area as Mammoth Cave. Although particularly beautiful, Crystal Cave experienced a disappointingly low amount of business because of its relatively remote location. Collins wanted to find another entrance to Mammoth or a new cave along the road leading to Mammoth in order to more easily draw off some of those tourists. Collins made an agreement with three farmers with land closer to the main highway in the area, if he found a cave with commercial potential on their land, the owners would pay to develop the cave, and Collins would share in the proceeds from operating it as a tourist attraction. Working alone over a period of three weeks, he explored and expanded a hole that would later be dubbed "Sand Cave" by news media.

On January 30, 1925, after a few hours work, Collins managed to squeeze through various narrow passageways: he claimed that he had discovered a large chamber, though this claim was never verified. Because his lamp was dying, he had to leave quickly, before exploring the chamber. He became trapped in a small passage while on his way out. He accidentally knocked over his lamp, putting the light out, and then he dislodged a rock from the ceiling, pinning his leg. It was later discovered that the rock weighed only 26½ pounds, but it was wedged in such a manner that neither he nor rescuers could reach it.

He was trapped only 150 feet from the entrance. After being found the next day by friends, hot food was taken to Floyd, and an electric light bulb was run down the passage to provide him light and some warmth, and he survived for over a week while efforts to rescue him were made. The cave passage used to reach Collins collapsed in two places on February 4. The rescue leaders, believing the cave to be impassable and too dangerous,

began to dig an artificial shaft to reach the chamber under Collins. The 55 foot shaft and subsequent lateral tunnel actually intersected the cave just above Collins, but when finally reached on February 17 he was found dead from exposure and starvation. Because they did not reach Collins from the rear, the rescuers still could not remove the rock from his leg. Deciding it was too dangerous to remove the body, the rescuers left it where it lay, and hastily filled the shaft with debris. A doctor later estimated he had died three or four days previously, Friday February 13 being the most likely.

After the body was left in the cave, a funeral service was held at the surface. However, Homer Collins was not satisfied with Sand Cave as a final resting place for his brother. Two months later Homer and friends reopened the shaft, dug a new tunnel to reach the opposite side of the cave passage, and retrieved the body on April 23, 1925. On April 26, Floyd's body was buried on the Collins homestead near Crystal Cave (renamed Floyd Collins Crystal Cave). In 1927 Floyd's father, Lee, sold the homestead and cave. On June 13, the new owner moved Floyd's body into a glass-topped coffin and exhibited it in Crystal Cave for many years. On the night of March 18–19, 1929, the body was stolen from Crystal. It was soon recovered but the left leg was missing. After this it was kept in a more secluded portion of Crystal in a chained casket. In 1961, Crystal Cave was purchased by Mammoth Cave National Park and closed to the public. Most of the family had long objected to Floyd's coffin being placed in the cave. At their request the National Park Service re-interred Floyd Collins in nearby Flint Ridge Cemetery on March 24, 1989. It took a team of 15 men three days to remove the casket and tombstone from Crystal. There was some objection to this from cavers in Europe, where notable explorers are often buried in caves they discovered.

The notoriety of the rescue helped fuel interest in the creation of Mammoth Cave National Park, of which Sand Cave became a part. For decades fear and superstition kept cavers away from Sand Cave. Eventually the National Park Service sealed the entrance with a welded steel grate to ensure public safety. Expeditions into Mammoth Cave revealed that portions of Mammoth actually run under Sand Cave, but not even a hint of a connection was discovered. In the 1970s, cave explorer and author Roger Brucker and a small group of explorers entered Sand Cave to conduct research for a book about Floyd Collins. The team surveyed Sand, and in the process discovered an opening in the tunnel collapses through which small cavers could crawl, revealing that it likely would have been possible to feed and heat Collins after February 4, 1925. They proceeded as far as the passage in which Collins was trapped, finding it choked with gravel debris and unsafe to excavate. In April 1983, George Crothers led an archaeological investigation that documented the many 1925 artifacts in the cave. The artifacts were then removed for preservation. Mammoth Cave developed in thick Mississippian-aged limestone strata capped by a layer of sandstone, making the system remarkably stable. It is known to include more than 367 miles of passageway; new discoveries and connections add several miles to this figure each year.

Sand Cave’s entrance is made of sandstone. The upper sandstone member is known as the Big Clifty Sandstone: thin, sparse layers of limestone interspersed within the sandstones give rise to an epikarstic zone, in which tiny conduits (cave passages too small to enter) are dissolved. The epikarstic zone concentrates local flows of runoff into high-elevation springs, which emerge at the edges of ridges. The resurgent water from these springs typically flows briefly on the surface before sinking underground again at the elevation of the contact between the sandstone cap rock and the underlying massive limestones. It is in these underlying massive limestone layers that the human explorable caves of the region are developed.

The limestone layers of the stratigraphic column beneath the Big Clifty, in increasing order of depth below the ridge tops, are the Girkin Formation, the Ste. Genevieve Limestone, and the St. Louis Limestone. Each of the primary layers of limestone is divided further into named units and subunits. One area of cave research involves correlating the stratigraphy with the cave survey produced by explorers.

The upper sandstone cap rock is relatively hard for water to penetrate. The exceptions are where vertical cracks occur. This protective role means that many of the older, upper passages of Sand Cave are very dry, with no stalactites, stalagmites, or other formations which require flowing or dripping water to develop.

However, the sandstone cap rock layer has been dissolved and eroded at many locations within the park, such as the Frozen Niagara room. The "contact" between limestone and sandstone can be found by hiking from the valley bottoms to the ridge tops: typically, as one approaches the top of a ridge, the outcrops of exposed rock seen change in composition from limestone to sandstone at a well-defined elevation, neglecting slump blocks of sandstone which have broken off the ridge tops and tumbled down the limestone slopes below.

To get credit for this EC, post a photo of you with Sand Cave in the background just like in the picture above and please answer the following questions.

1. What is the width of the cave opening?

2. What is the height of the cave opening?

3. How deep is the pit that Sand Cave sits in?

Permission for the earthcache allowed by the Mammoth Caves National Park. Always ask for permission first!

This is a Mammoth Caves National Park approved EarthCache site. The information here is from the Mammoth Caves National Park website. Thanks to those who enjoy EarthCaches and keeps Cav Scout placing them.

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Do not log this EC unless you have answered the questions and have a picture ready to post! Logs with no photo of the actual cacher logging the find or failure to answer questions or negative comments will result in a log deletion without notice. Exceptions will be considered if you contact me first (I realize sometimes we forget our cameras or the batteries die). You must post a photo at the time of logging your find. If your picture is not ready then wait until you have a photo.

Sources of information for the EarthCache quoted from the Mamoth Caves National Park website. I have used sources available to me by using google search to get information for this earth cache. I am by no means a geologist.. I use books, internet, and ask questions about geology just like 99.9 percent of the geocachers who create these great Earth Caches. I enjoy Earth Caches and want people to get out and see what I see every time I go and explore this great place we live in.