Floyd Collins Still Stuck, In Our Memories After 100 Years: Mammoth Cave National Park Celebrates Anniversary with Tour

The expanse of gypsum spreads across the area known as "the Grand Canyon" in the Great Crystal Cave discovered over 100 years ago by Floyd Collins Thursday January 23 in Mammoth Cave National Park.

Story and photos by Joseph Barkoff:
​​It looks good from the dark for the future of the “greatest cave explorer ever known,” looking out from the Floyd Collins Crystal Cave located in Mammoth Cave National Park, Mammoth Park, Kentucky.
 
“Greatest cave explorer ever known,” is what it says on Collins’ tombstone, after finally being buried for the fifth time March 24, 1989, in the cemetery located at the Mammoth Cave Baptist Church in Mammoth Cave. 
 
Greatest ever known? 
 
“I would like to think so,” Mammoth Cave National Park guide Jackie Wheet said standing in front of the Collins’ family plots. “Especially that you’ve got museums and displays dedicated to him, and books written about him. Hopefully they won’t go away.”
 
There is a Broadway musical coming out soon too. A preview is set for March with opening day in April.
 
As the world prepares to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of Floyd Collins, the keepers of his history and meaning prepare to share some of their enthusiasm and a view on a tour not seen by the public for almost 65 years.
 
“The publicizing of his plight helped lead to the Mammoth Cave National Park,” Mammoth Cave National Park cave specialist Rick Toomey said. “And having Mammoth Cave National Park include Floyd Collins as one of the central stories that we tell here at the park helped keep his story alive.”
 
He helped create the National Park and the National Park helps preserve his legacy, Toomey said.
 
His legacy is about to get an infusion of enthusiasts, but only around 300 to start.
 
There was a lottery for tickets to be able to join the tour beginning December 5 last year closing 13 days later on the 18th and all of the spots are filled for the tour to take place.
 
The lottery was to ensure that anyone and everyone had a fair chance at winning a ticket, Mammoth Cave National Park Public Information Officer Molly Schroer explained to the small group of media about to take the tour that the public will experience next month in February.

Mammoth Cave National Park PIO Molly Schroer enters into the Great Crystal Cave Thursday January 23 in Mammoth Cave National Park.

Gypsum is seen all over the Great Crystal Cave discovered by Floyd Collins 100 years ago Thursday January 23 in Mammoth Cave National Park.

A tour group of media descends into the the Great Crystal Cave discovered by Floyd Collins 100 years ago Thursday January 23 in Mammoth Cave National Park.

​The tour was pleasant despite the weather being below freezing outside. The staff who accompanied and led the tour could have packed lunches and the group of media may have been content to listen for longer. At one point we had to be reminded there was such a thing as time.
 
It is hard to judge time deep inside a cave system.
 
First on the tour was a quick bus ride to the trail leading to the cave called the Sand Cave where Collins was trapped and a debacle erupted in trying to extricate him, where he ultimately perished. Then a quick hike down the trail to an overlook of the direct entrance and a place to imagine the situation, guides Wheets and Toomey elaborated beyond the signpost along the trail.  
 
Facing the entrance, the cave has an “L” shape, maybe it’s a half-moon. It is hard to judge exactly because it is covered across the top in icicles like a gaping maw of teeth all pointing down in a toothy frown.
 
In the distance loud cracks and bangs are heard sounding like snow or ice melting and having its way with the environment.
 
The Sand Cave is closed. It is too dangerous to go down unaccompanied without proper safety equipment and this tour is rated as “beginner.”
 
In the future there will be a new walkway leading down the trail to the overlook as well as a trail built to accommodate the more adventurous who want to peer into the mouth of the cave.
 
Standing high above the entrance, looking down, where the trail leads from is high ground, everywhere forward from the cave entrance is high ground, imagining standing in the same snow is over 1,000 people without access to Gore-Tex. That equals a lot of fires, which melts snow, and water usually loses the gravity war, so down it went atop a stuck Collins, kind of debacle, called “Carnival Sunday” on day 10 of the attempted rescue in 1925.
 
The trail down will follow the trail formed by the public walking down over time even though it is technically closed to the public and not supposed to happen.
 
It’s one of the goals the Park has for long term, Toomey said painting a picture of a new paved path from the street instead of the more difficult to maintain plank style walkway.
 
Next on the tour was another short bus ride to the front of Collins’ house. 
 
From there, the trail down to his other cave, his money-making cave, the Great Crystal Cave, where Collins body was displayed for most of the first half of the past century.
 
It was even stolen once and the grave robbers attempted to throw it over a bridge into a river, but Collins’ body was hung up on a tree and he was eventually put back in the cave.
 
The steps down into the doorway Collin’s might have had to have ducked a bit is treacherous without ice, snow and the threat of melt from both warm air escaping the now open cave and the sun continuing its daily almost futile assault on the cold.
 
The cave is warm. In through a second door, even warmer.
 
With headlamps attached to provided spelunking helmets, the cave tunnel ahead is illuminated and winds towards an opening named “Grand Canyon,” as it seems to expand beyond the reach of headlamp light and covered in a glittering crust of gypsum.

Mammoth Cave National Park guide Jackie Wheet describes the conditions of the area surrounding the Sand Cave where Floyd Collins died 100 years ago Thursday January 23 in Mammoth Cave National Park.

Icicles hang across the entrance to the Sand Cave where Floyd Collins died 100 years ago Thursday January 23 in Mammoth Cave National Park.

Mammoth Cave National Park cave specialist describes what were some of the conditions in the Sand Cave where Floyd Collins died 100 years ago Thursday January 23 in Mammoth Cave National Park.

​Along the path, scattered in some cases, placed in others, lay what looks like trash. The oddly shaped cave detritus, like a crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes laying on a rock just off the trail or small pile of ticket stubs and cards, all from a time past, now all could be artifacts. 
 
It is better to leave them untouched, all of the Park guides said at different points on the tour.
 
There are light bulbs, some with and some without glass attached. Lying about and poking out of piles of rocks. 
 
Did they fall once broken in a time past? Did someone leave it there on purpose? Was someone making a joke? The questions are as endless as the imagination has possible answers in some cases.
 
The railings are polished smooth from thousands of hands from across decades sliding across them during the precarious decent are now for show. They once worked but have since been left in place to preserve the Great Cave for how it was.
 
The cave is beautiful. It is warm on this cool day in January nearly 100 years after Collins was trapped. It will be cool on warm days, if February has a warm one in store for the future tours.
 
It would take an exuberant amount of funding to be able to create a completely safe, probably still arduous, but safe way to ascend and descend the cave using the techniques and styles of Collins’ time to keep it authentic to the history and period.
 
It is important to keep everything intact, the way it was, Schroer, Wheets and Toomey all said.
 
Seeing it is believing. Seeing it intact, there is no other way to imagine it.
 
There is one thing the guides did not mention until the cemetery. There is a custom of asking Floyd to come along when the cave is visited. They all asked him to come along at different places and points along the way before the adventure and at the beginning, they all said.
 
Understandable why they might not say something, it is awful dark in those caves, but regardless at no time was it creepy. Even after the tradition was explained.
 
It seems the tradition is to ask Floyd Collins to come along for the people who are going in their first trip, so they can ask the next time by themselves, if that day comes.
 
In the meantime, the maw of an icicle frown will melt and the longest known cave system in the world, at 426 miles of passage could grow longer with the continued professional and amateur exploration throughout the Mammoth Cave National Park Cave’s tunnels. Time will tell.
 
Time may not have been exactly on Floyd Collins’ side, but everything he touched seems to have held up pretty well.