Mammoth Cave
Mammoth Cave was formed by a set of unique geological circumstances that
can only occur in a karst region like that found in South Central
Kentucky. A karst region is a limestone landscape, characterized by
caves, fissures, and underground streams. The karst region of Kentucky
has been diligently working to form Mammoth Cave for over 350,000,000
years. It is the most extensive cave system on earth with over 335 miles
of mapped passages, and is at least three times the length of any other
cave system in the world. Scientists estimate there are another 600
miles or more that have not been explored. Mammoth Cave National Park is
located about 35 miles northeast of Bowling Green, KY and about 90 miles
southwest of Louisville, KY and about 90 miles northeast on Nashville,
TN. Originally called Flatt’s Cave, it visitors became coming in 1810,
and it became nationally known in 1816.
Mammoth Cave was authorized as a national park in 1926. and was fully
established in 1941. Only 40 miles of cave had been mapped at that time.
The cave is a premier national park, and an international treasure for
all people of the world, as it was recognized in 1981 by the United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization when they
voted to place Mammoth Cave National Park on it’s list of World Heritage
Sites. It has more recently been recognized as an International
Biosphere Reserve by the organization in 1990.
The karst system unique to Kentucky is an underlying level of limestone
700 feet thick in some places, and underground streams whose headwaters
begin far outside of the 53,000 acres of the park boundary. As rainwater
seeps through the soil, carbonic acid is formed by carbon dioxide in the
soil that slowly dissolves limestone. As the land began to rise millions
of years ago, the Green River Eroded its channel deeper, cracks in the
limestone became bigger and formed micro caverns along the cracks, which
overtime became caves.
The clues that you are in a karst region are the layered grayish rock
broken into irregular blocks along highways near Mammoth Cave. Between
the layers you can see the openings in the limestone that are the
beginning stages of a forming cave. The landscape also gives visual
clues, such as the lack of surface streams. Instead, there are
crater-like depressions or “sinkholes” When a sinkhole drain becomes
plugged with soil, a pond forms. Occasionally the drain becomes
unplugged, and a pond as large as several acres can disappear overnight.
Mammoth Cave really has to be seen to be appreciated, and a variety of
tours are available to the general public from the tourist to the avid
spelunker. With or without guides, you will learn some of the other
fascinating facts about Mammoth Cave. The life forms in the caves and
it’s ecosystem, the connection to the surface world, and the care that
needs to taken with the underground water tables in Kentucky to insure
this 3.5 million year old treasure is preserved, can be learned on a
visit. Since there is constant change, and multiple types of tours, you
can return again and again and have a different experience each time.
Author Ron Stemple
Copyright 2006, Ron Dowell |
