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 s credited with focusing a great deal of national attention to Mammoth Caves.
Following is a short story of a tragic event that happened at Sand Cave.
Along the entrance road to Mammoth Cave on Friday January 30, 1925 local cave owner and well known cave explorer Floyd Collins descended alone underground searching for a cave in a better location. The Collins family’s cave, Crystal Cave laid too far off the main route to attract many tourists. Crawling through a very tight squeeze on his way back to the surface, Collins kicked a rock loose behind him, pinning his leg. Constrained by the tight passage, Floyd Collins was trapped, 60 feet below the surface. After locating Floyd the following morning, friends and family made several unsuccessful attempts to free him over the next five days.
Word of Floyd’s plight spread fast and soon help was arriving from throughout the region. Drawn by newspaper accounts, an estimated 10,000 people gathered around sand cave on Sunday February 8th. The atmosphere was that of a carnival. Families picnicked, children frolicked, concession stands sold food and drink, and prayer groups formed-while moonshiners slipped in and out of the crowd. Before long the crowd dispersed, leaving behind the rescuers working nonstop to sink a rescue shaft to get Floyd out.
For days volunteer crews labored in 24 hour shifts under the lip of a rock ledge to sink a rescue shaft 60 feet to reach Floyd Collins. No contact with Floyd had been possible since a collapse on February 3rd.
The work slowed down due to the inability to use explosives or heavy machinery for fear of causing further collapse. Every inch of the shaft had to be shored up to protect those laboring with hand tools against stone.
On the morning of February 16th a 12 foot lateral tunnel broke through to Floyd. He was found dead.
Floyd was eventually removed from the cave and Sand Cave soon fell silent again.
But the story of Floyd Collins continues to be told in song, theater and film.
Floyd Collins’s entrapment did much to publicize the cave region of Kentucky and one year later, in 1926, the Southern Appalachian Commission would recommend that Mammoth Cave be added to the growing National Park system.
Now for the Geology of Sand Cave.
Sand Cave is made up of sandstone and limestone.
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 are dissolved by the natural acidity of groundwater. 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 elevation of the contact between the sandstone caprock and the underlying massive limestones.
It is in these underlying massive limestone layers that the human-explorable caves(caverns large enough for humans to move around in) of the region have naturally developed.
The limestone layers of the stratigraphic column beneath the Big Clifty, in increasing order of depth below the ridgetops, are the Girkin Formation, the St. Genevieve Limestone, and the St. Louis Limestone.
The upper sandstone caprock 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 the cave system are very dry, with no stalactites(formations that hang from the ceiling of caves), stalagmites(formations that rise from the floor of caves), or other formations which require flowing or dripping water to develop. However, the sandstone caprock 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 ridgetops: typically, as one approaches the top of a ridge, one sees the outcrops of exposed rock change in composition from limestone to sandstone at a well-defined elevation.
To get credit for this Earth Cache you must hike to the posted coordinates, find the answers to these questions and email me the answers.
A picture of you is not a requirement to log this Earth Cache but one would be appreciated.
1. After observing the terrain in front of Sand Cave's entrance would you say that the entrance used to extend out further and if so what has caused it to deteriorate?
2. How has Sand Cave affected the surrounding terrain?
I am not an expert on Geology and don’t claim to be.
Like most cachers I find my information elsewhere.
In no way do I claim that all of the information contained in this Earth cache is 100% mine.
Like most people that create Earth Caches I had to do most of my research on the internet.
I found most of the information for this Earth Cache from the information supplied on the trail to Sand cave by Mammoth Cave National Park and NPRanger.com
This Earth Cache has been created with permission from Mammoth Cave National Park
Remember it is against the rules at Mammoth Cave National Park to get off the designated trails and please respect the wildlife.
Please don’t get off the trails even if it looks like someone else has.