A Personal Word. I imbibed an early taste for the sciences from my
father, the late Professor Edmund Otis Hovey, D. D., one of the founders
of Wabash College, and a pioneer geologist in Indiana. My annual
vacations, during a busy professional career spanning over fifty years,
have largely been given to underground explorations.
When fifteen years old I began cave-hunting amid the charming grottoes
near Madison, Indiana. An enthusiastic comrade, six years my senior,
then proposed that we visit the Mammoth Cave. For certain reasons, while
he went on, I got no farther at that time than Louisville; where,
however, I bought, at the bookstore of Morton and Griswold, a copy of
“Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, by a Visitor.” It was just out. It fired
my boyish imagination, and it gave shape to much of my after life.
More than four hundred books, pamphlets, scientific reports, and
magazine articles have been published by different writers, besides
innumerable newspaper contributions, about Kentucky’s great cavern.
Copies of most of these are in the author’s library.
Yet there is a demand, and there seems to be room, for such a practical,
condensed, and up-to-date hand-book as is now offered. It does not claim
to tell all that might be told; and it omits much material that might
interest the historian or the scientist. Its design is to aid the
average visitor as he follows the four regulation routes by which the
Cave is ordinarily exhibited.
Those who covet more abundant information as to places not often
visited, or concerning the cavern fauna and flora, or as to details of
local history, or as to Mammoth Cave bibliography, are referred to the
larger Illustrated Manual of Mammoth Cave, by Hovey and Call, published
by John P. Morton and Company, and for sale at the Cave. My still more
comprehensive work on “Celebrated American Caverns,” now out of print,
may be found on the shelves of most public libraries.
The revised Guide Map (1907 and 1909) in this volume, and for sale (on a
larger scale) at the Cave hotel, was made by me from an original partial
survey, earlier charts being consulted, especially those by Stephen
Bishop and Dr. C. R. Blackall, with a few corrections and additions
suggested by Mr. Max Kaemper, to whom thanks are also due for important
facts concerning his discoveries in 1908. The route-sketches found in
this hand-book were redrawn from those made by him.
Acknowledgments are likewise due to my son, Dr. E. O. Hovey, of New York
City; to my former comrade in cave-hunting, Dr. R. Ellsworth Call; to
Benj. F. Einbigler, Norman A. Parrish, and others, for valuable
correspondence and memoranda; to the late Mr. Ben Hains and Mr. H. M.
Pinson, photographers; to Mr. H. C. Ganter for use of copyrighted cuts;
to the officials of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad for additional
illustrative material, as well as for other courtesies and favors; and
particularly to the trustees, managers, and guides of Mammoth Cave for
heartily and generously facilitating explorations in former and more
recent years, without which this work would have been impossible.
Finally, for information as to trains via the Louisville and Nashville
Railroad and connections at Glasgow Junction with the Mammoth Cave
Railroad; for the arrival and departure of steamboats on Green River;
for terms of Cave routes and guides, and for hotel rates by the day or
the week, and for other details not within the scope of this hand-book,
application may be made to the Mammoth Cave Manager, at Mammoth Cave,
Kentucky. Our simple aim is to aid and entertain the reader in his
subterranean rambles.
Horace C. Hovey.
Newburyport, Mass.
The Mammoth Cave
OF KENTUCKY