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The Longest Cave
In 1925 the geological connection between Flint Ridge and Mammoth Cave was proved when dye placed in a Flint Ridge spring showed up in Echo River at Mammoth Cave.
That tantalizing swirl of dye confirmed speculations that wereto tempt more than 650cavers over half a century with the thrill of being the first to make human passage of the cave connection. Roger Brucker and Richard Watson tell not only of their own twenty-year effort to complete the link but the stories of many others who worked their way through mud-choked crawlways less than a foot high only to find impenetrable blockages.
Floyd Collins died a grisly death in nearby Sand Cave in1925, after being trapped there for 15 days. The wide press coverage of the rescue efforts stirred the imagination of the public and his body was on macabre display in a glass-topped coffin in Crystal Cave into the 1940s. Agents of a rival cave owner once even stole his corpse, which was recovered and still is in a coffin in the cave. Modern cavers still have a word with Floyd as they start their downward treks.
Brucker and Watson joined the parade of cavers who propelled themselves by wiggling kneecaps, elbows, and toes through quarter-mile long crawlways, clinging by fingertips and boot toes across mud-slick walls, over bottomless pits, into gurgling streams beneath stone ceilings that descend to water level, down crumbling crevices and up mountainous rockfalls, into wondrous domed halls, and straight ahead into a blackness intensified rather than dispelled by the carbide lamps on their helmets.
Over two decades they explored the passages with others who sought the final connection as vigorously as themselves. Pat Crowther, a young mother of two, joined them and because of her thinness became the member of the crew to go first into places no human had ever gone before. In that role, in July 1972, she wiggled her way through the Tight Spot and found the route that would link the Flint Ridge and Mammoth Cave systems into one cave extending 144.4 miles through the Kentucky limestone.
In a new afterword to this edition the authors summarize the subsequent explorations that have more than doubled the established length of the cave system. Based upon geological evidence, the authors predict that new discoveries will add another 200 miles to the length of the world’s longest cave, making it over 500 miles long.
That tantalizing swirl of dye confirmed speculations that wereto tempt more than 650cavers over half a century with the thrill of being the first to make human passage of the cave connection. Roger Brucker and Richard Watson tell not only of their own twenty-year effort to complete the link but the stories of many others who worked their way through mud-choked crawlways less than a foot high only to find impenetrable blockages.
Floyd Collins died a grisly death in nearby Sand Cave in1925, after being trapped there for 15 days. The wide press coverage of the rescue efforts stirred the imagination of the public and his body was on macabre display in a glass-topped coffin in Crystal Cave into the 1940s. Agents of a rival cave owner once even stole his corpse, which was recovered and still is in a coffin in the cave. Modern cavers still have a word with Floyd as they start their downward treks.
Brucker and Watson joined the parade of cavers who propelled themselves by wiggling kneecaps, elbows, and toes through quarter-mile long crawlways, clinging by fingertips and boot toes across mud-slick walls, over bottomless pits, into gurgling streams beneath stone ceilings that descend to water level, down crumbling crevices and up mountainous rockfalls, into wondrous domed halls, and straight ahead into a blackness intensified rather than dispelled by the carbide lamps on their helmets.
Over two decades they explored the passages with others who sought the final connection as vigorously as themselves. Pat Crowther, a young mother of two, joined them and because of her thinness became the member of the crew to go first into places no human had ever gone before. In that role, in July 1972, she wiggled her way through the Tight Spot and found the route that would link the Flint Ridge and Mammoth Cave systems into one cave extending 144.4 miles through the Kentucky limestone.
In a new afterword to this edition the authors summarize the subsequent explorations that have more than doubled the established length of the cave system. Based upon geological evidence, the authors predict that new discoveries will add another 200 miles to the length of the world’s longest cave, making it over 500 miles long.
353 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1976
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225 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 23, 2016
This book will always be 5 stars for me. I believe this is the 5th or 6th time I have read it. It is without a doubt the book I have read more than any other book.
I read it for the first time in the mid 90s because caving was a hobby of mine in high school. I went at least once a week during the summer to southern Kentucky to cave with a group of my friends from the museum in Cincinnati. It was a great time.
I am not sure that everyone will enjoy this book. Certainly an interest in caving helps. However, I think that if you like books about people pushing themselves to the extreme to accomplish the amazing, you will enjoy this book. It contains stories of people driven to their ultimate limit. People freezing, jammed in passages smaller than their body, hours and hours away from the nearest cave entrance, all with the goal of exploring and connecting the Flint Ridge Cave System to Mammoth Cave.
If you are okay with the caving subject matter and like stories of people pushing to the extreme, give it a go and I can almost guarantee you will enjoy it!
I read it for the first time in the mid 90s because caving was a hobby of mine in high school. I went at least once a week during the summer to southern Kentucky to cave with a group of my friends from the museum in Cincinnati. It was a great time.
I am not sure that everyone will enjoy this book. Certainly an interest in caving helps. However, I think that if you like books about people pushing themselves to the extreme to accomplish the amazing, you will enjoy this book. It contains stories of people driven to their ultimate limit. People freezing, jammed in passages smaller than their body, hours and hours away from the nearest cave entrance, all with the goal of exploring and connecting the Flint Ridge Cave System to Mammoth Cave.
If you are okay with the caving subject matter and like stories of people pushing to the extreme, give it a go and I can almost guarantee you will enjoy it!
May 18, 2014
An enjoyable read about an obsessive quest to find a connection between two caves and thereby prove they are in fact a single, world-champion cave. As a caver, I really enjoyed reading it. Not a profound book, but a good narration of a difficult quest.
June 12, 2017
Two people in quick succession gave me an enthusiastic review of this somewhat random book. After visiting Mammoth Cave myself, I picked it up at the gift shop and read it. Quite an interesting history of how the Flint Mammoth Cave System became the longest known cave in the world and the explorers who made it happen.
April 30, 2024
A compelling page-turner about some of the hundreds of people who helped explore the Flint Ridge and Mammoth Cave systems. A fascinating look at the amateur cavers who enthusiastically did scientific research to document the extent of these caves.
August 10, 2018
Interesting account of connecting the cave systems from two ridges to map what became the world's longest cave
October 11, 2025
A fascinating account of a history of cave exploration and surveying that was a complete novelty to me, told in an amusing and offhanded manner by some of the people most responsible for the work.
June 18, 2010
If you love Mammoth Cave, and/or caving, and/or horrible writing, then you'll love this book!
The story is neat, and I feel like I now know the Flint Mammoth Cave System, and have some understanding of the long and difficult process of connecting these formally separate systems (Flint Ridge and Mammoth Cave). But seriously, the writing is awful. If you think that won't bother you (I mean, I finished the book, read every word, but I'm somewhat obsessed with Mammoth Cave), then have at.
Formal Complaint #1:
The book is a TEENSY WEENSY BIT self-serving. It read something like this: "I, Roger Brucker, am a great caver. In fact, I, Roger Brucker, am a REALLY great caver. Once, my friend said to me, 'Roger Brucker, you're a great caver.' And I said, 'Yeah. I am.'"
Even his acknowledgment of collaborative effort--"It wasn't just the 6 people in the final connection party who connected these caves. It was hundreds of people."--seems self-serving when you realize that Brucker wasn't IN the final connection party.
Formal Complaint #2:
Pacing. Dull moments read the same as: exciting moments, background information, explanations of caving moves, and musings about the meaning of life. I normally don't whine about pacing and sentence structure, because I (would) probably suck at it, too, but 300 pages of same, same, same was torturous.
Formal Complaint #3:
The meaning of life musings. Are you REALLY going to insist that cavers are the only real adventurers, the only truly self-aware individuals, AND the only supremely dedicated people in the world? Don't even get me started, Roger Brucker.
Non-formal Complaint:
This is not a story. There's no character development or graceful turns in the plot. He's simply telling it "as it happened." So too many people enter the storyline only to exit a few pages later, and the climax is SUPER drawn out; about 20 times they were going in to make the "final connection." But hey, that's real life, right?
The story is neat, and I feel like I now know the Flint Mammoth Cave System, and have some understanding of the long and difficult process of connecting these formally separate systems (Flint Ridge and Mammoth Cave). But seriously, the writing is awful. If you think that won't bother you (I mean, I finished the book, read every word, but I'm somewhat obsessed with Mammoth Cave), then have at.
Formal Complaint #1:
The book is a TEENSY WEENSY BIT self-serving. It read something like this: "I, Roger Brucker, am a great caver. In fact, I, Roger Brucker, am a REALLY great caver. Once, my friend said to me, 'Roger Brucker, you're a great caver.' And I said, 'Yeah. I am.'"
Even his acknowledgment of collaborative effort--"It wasn't just the 6 people in the final connection party who connected these caves. It was hundreds of people."--seems self-serving when you realize that Brucker wasn't IN the final connection party.
Formal Complaint #2:
Pacing. Dull moments read the same as: exciting moments, background information, explanations of caving moves, and musings about the meaning of life. I normally don't whine about pacing and sentence structure, because I (would) probably suck at it, too, but 300 pages of same, same, same was torturous.
Formal Complaint #3:
The meaning of life musings. Are you REALLY going to insist that cavers are the only real adventurers, the only truly self-aware individuals, AND the only supremely dedicated people in the world? Don't even get me started, Roger Brucker.
Non-formal Complaint:
This is not a story. There's no character development or graceful turns in the plot. He's simply telling it "as it happened." So too many people enter the storyline only to exit a few pages later, and the climax is SUPER drawn out; about 20 times they were going in to make the "final connection." But hey, that's real life, right?
May 4, 2014
A fascinating tale of the 20-year effort to connect the Flint Ridge Cave system with Mammoth Cave to prove it is the world’s longest cave. Brucker, a past president of the Cave Research Foundation paints a vivid and often scary look at the travails of the spelunkers who had to confront not only difficult passageways and dead ends, but the politics of the National Park System. The quest to discover new routes and to expand a cave system requires almost unimaginable daring and stoicism to this claustrophobic reader.
November 14, 2008
This book describes the explorations of Mammoth Cave and the nearby Flint Ridge cave systems from its initial commercialization through the mid 1970's and the various connections made in the region to put Mammoth Cave on the map as the longest cave system in the world.
If you are interested in caves and their exploration, I'd recommend it.
If you are interested in caves and their exploration, I'd recommend it.
February 7, 2011
A good book about the history of Mammoth Cave exploration. The author does a good job explaining the caving experience and igniting the desire to become a spelunker!
March 15, 2011
Interesting, thought provoking, I do not want to be a caver based on this book.
April 17, 2012
Exploration of Mammoth Cave - when it was linked up to become the longest cave in the world.
March 20, 2014
I liked the action parts the best.
May 15, 2016
An interesting and fact-filled book about Mammoth cave. I enjoyed learning about the history, geology, etc of this cave system.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews