Seneca Caverns

On our honeymoon (almost 9 years ago already!!) Jim and I stayed at a condo down in Tennessee for one week. Then spent the other week driving home and stopping at anything that caught our eyes. Many of our sight-seeing stops were in Kentucky and Tennesse at various caves and caverns such as The Lost Sea, The Forbidden Caverns and the Ohio Caverns. There is something majestic, thrilling and sometimes even historical about climbing hundreds of feet underground and seeing rivers, blind fish, old moonshine stills. Its sparked a desire to visit any caves or caverns that we run across. However, it took us nearly 9 years to find a weekend to drive 90 minutes to the west to visit the Seneca Caverns.




A bit of history about the Seneca Caverns:

The cave was discovered in June 1872 by two boys named Peter Rutan and Henry Homer while they were hunting rabbits with their dog. The dog chased a rabbit into a brush pile, where they then disappeared. While searching through the brush pile, the two boys found an opening, fell through it, and landed in the first level of the cave, where they found their dog. The boys returned home and told everyone about their discovery. The cave became known as Good's Cave, named for Emmanuel Good, the owner of the farm on which the cave was located.

In 1931, Don Bell, a lawyer from Bellevue, discovered a series of passageways and rooms in the cave which led to an underground river, called Ole' Mist'ry River, which is part of the vast groundwater system that underlies the surrounding region. After two and a half years of improvement effort, the cave was renamed Seneca Caverns and opened to the public on May 14, 1933.


I always think the entrances of caverns are creepy. Like something from a horror movie.



This was by far the most challenging cave we've been in. The next two pictures are the "steps" leading from level to level. The third and fourth pictures are just an example of how much of the tour was. Hunched-over, twisted, turned one-at-a-time single filed.









These are pictures of some of the writings on the walls from before it became illegal to do so. The date on the bottom one is from 1922. They are so perfectly preserved since the cave experiences no weather conditions at all. Just a pleasant 54 degrees year round.





In the spring, after the snow has melted and April showers drench the land, you are only able to travel down to the third or fourth levels in the Seneca Caverns. As mentioned above in the history, there is an underground river in the caverns and as it rains the river rises thus flooding out the lower levels. We were able to make it down to the seventh level before we ran into the river. The picture below is borrowed from another website because my camera couldn't take a good enough picture. It shows an underwater staircase leading to another level.



Back in the 1970's there was a severe drought in the area causing the water to receed down to a tweflth level!! Even then, it was discovered there was another staircase leading downward yet. They sent scuba divers in to see how many more levels there are but due to the bulkiness of the equipment and the tightness of the cave they were not able to do any further. But they did find yet one more staircase leading down to a fourteenth level. So to this day, they do not know how deep the Seneca Caverns really are. Amazing, huh?