Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky contains the world’s longest known cave system at over 426 mapped miles.
It has long captivated visitors with its immense underground passages and geological formations.
“Obviously, the geology is amazing. It’s what (first) brought people here and what brings people back to study this region,” stated Mammoth Cave National Park spokesperson Molly Schroer. “I mean, what drives a person to go into a dark, mysterious hole in the ground? It’s curiosity.”
“When they get down there and they feel that darkness and they feel that sense of wonder, they really do connect to the cave and see what a special location it is,” Schroer said.
“There are caves that have larger rooms, but we are the longest,” Schroer said. “We are currently mapped at 426 miles. We are still finding more cave. The explorers tell us there’s no end in sight at this point.”
“Mammoth Cave is one of the few places in the world where we can trace the transition from hunter-gatherers to an agricultural community,” Schroer said. “Prehistoric people from the Late Archaic and Early Woodland period inhabited the forests and plains of Kentucky and focused on the river valleys and their abundant resources. Researchers have traced the rise of farming in these groups by looking at pre-historic poo found inside the caves.”
An estimated 10 million years ago, Schroer said, “Water started trickling down through the cracks that are within that limestone and began to slowly eat away at the passageways to form Mammoth Cave.”
“There’s currently about what we call five levels of cave passageways, and that lowest level, the fifth level at the bottom, still has water in it actively forming new caves,” she added.
The cave provides insights into human history as well, with evidence that Native Americans mined minerals there as early as 5,000-2,000 BCE.
Guided tours allow visitors to experience portions of the cave safely, with options ranging from short to extended tours.
“We know that they explored many, many miles of the cave, which is pretty amazing,” Schroer said.
“It’s for resource protection, one, because we don’t want people writing on the walls. That has happened,” Schroer said. “There’s also many different directions you can take when you get down there, so it is for the protection of people too, that they don’t wander off somewhere that they shouldn’t be and get lost.”
While most areas are not wheelchair accessible, there is one elevator-accessed tour.
Above ground, the park offers over 80 miles of trails for hiking, biking, and horseback riding, as well as campgrounds and opportunities to canoe or kayak.
“We take people down in an elevator,” Schroer said. “They’re able to see a portion of the cave that is level and has been hardened, and then we can take them back out of that via the elevator.”
“The cave is just one part of the park,” Schroer said. “We say half of the park is underground. Obviously, the other part is in the sunny side of the world. We have canoeing and kayaking on some great rivers … We also have over 80 miles of hiking, biking and horseback riding trails, so it’s good to see the above surface.”
“It’s more than just a one-day visit,” Schroer said. “If you want to stay for a couple of days, you can find plenty of recreational opportunities.”
“The Bottomless Pit is only about 105 feet deep, but back in the early 1800s, when (settlers) were first exploring and touring the cave, the tourists that would get to the area known as the Bottomless Pit would look down and their little lanterns would not show the bottom, so it looked like it went on forever,” Schroer said.
Researchers have uncovered an abundance of ancient shark fossils and unique cave-adapted creatures still inhabit the depths, including eyeless fish and endangered shrimp found nowhere else.
“We have eyeless fish,” Schroer said. “They’re down in the lowest section of the cave. They’ve evolved (so) that they have no eyesight because they don’t need it in a world of total darkness. They’re pale. They’re white. You can kind of see their organs on the inside. They’re very interesting.”
“There are lots of cave crickets,” Schroer said. “They are a keystone species of the cave because they go out to the surface feed, then come back in to lay eggs. So they’re bringing food sources into the cave to reach those creatures that never leave the cave, so they’re very important for the habitat and ecosystem of the cave.”
