Medicine Hole EarthCache
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The Killdeer Mountain Legend - a neat cave with an Indian lore.
A mysterious hole on a North Dakota butte has kept people guessing for years. Did the Sioux really escape down its narrow and winding passage? The legend began over 100 years ago and has yet to be verified. For ambitious hikers the legend awaits them on a scenic butte top 8 miles NW of Killdeer.
The place is called Medicine Hole, a small entrance to a narrow, little explored cave that extends down into one of the high steep buttes known as the Killdeer Mountains. Medicine Hole got its name by emitting a smoky fog on cold mornings and visitors can still feel air currents rising from the "hole".
Little was known about the Medicine Hole until General Alfred Sully led a punitive expedition against the united and warring Sioux in 1864. He found the Indians, 1,600 warriors from several different bands, with all their women and children camped at the foot of the Killdeer Mountains. In the battle that followed on July 28th, 1864, Sully's 2,200 soldiers with artillery routed the Sioux sending the entire camp fleeing up the ravines into the Killdeer Mountains. The Indians so fully expected victory they had let Suly's soldiers get within easy reach of their camps, which were well stocked for the approaching winter.
As the legend goes, the fleeing Indians left everything and lit out for the Badlands. One band of Sioux, surronded near the top of the buttes, disappeared. Where? Down the narrow Medicine Hole? Little more than a week later Sully's army was miles west of the Killdeer Mountains searching for stragglers and encountered the same band of Indians that allegedly escaped down the hole. As the story goes, the Indians had traveled thrugh a network of underground caverns underlying western ND. The fact that wind currents can be detected from the hole only lent support to the tale. Early settlors, aware of the many natural springs in the area, give even more credence to the cavern theories.
One version of Indian folklore contends that the first buffalo emerged from the earth at Medicine Hole and another attributes Medicine Hole as being the place from which all life emerged.
Nearly 50 years ago a group exploring the hole managed to explore about 175 feet. They found three openings - all plugged from rocks thrown down from above and from ranchers dynamiting the hole. From one opening a strong, steady wind was blowing.
Medicine Hole Plateau is located on the SE edge of South Killdeer Mountain. The small, narrow plateau is developed on tuffaceous (volcanic rich) carbonates and sandstones of the Arikaree Formation. It rises 700 feed above the surrounding countryside and is 100 feet below the top of the mesa. Medicine Hole is an east-west trending crack or fissure that resulted when a block of Arikaree strata broke away from the mountain. The crack runs for approximately 100 feet. The cavern varies from 5 to 30 feet high and the deepest point is approzimately 70 feed below the surface (Forney, 1977). The crack apparently has an exit because air can be felt escaping from the entrance. Medicine Hole may connect with a rattlesnake den which is present to the southwest approximately 80 feet below the top of Medicine Hole Plateau.
Several cracks or fissures were noted by T.T. Quirke in his 1914 map of the Killdeer Mountains. Several of the reported fissures on the northwest end of North Mountain had been filled in over the years.
For a quick historical visit you can drive to the monument describing the Battle of the Killdeer Mountains as well as view two graves of the soldiers that died in the battle. This site is just a few miles southwest of Medicine Hole.
As you view the hole be carefull about entering too far. It drops fairly steeply right off the entrance. Please email me the answers to the following questions:
What is the size of the entrance down in the pit?
Can you feel the air current coming from the entrance?
What is the color of the earth surrounding the entrance?
Bonus point - what is the term the locals use for the mud created when rain wets the surface surrounding the cave?
Enjoy the hike and the great view from the top!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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