Unearthing Mammoth Cave Collections at the Filson

Mammoth Cave, the world's largest known cave system, consists of more than four hundred miles of underground passageways. This marvelous subterranean palace in Edmonson County, Kentucky, is about ninety miles south of Louisville. Today, Mammoth Cave is a national park, and tourists from around the world flock to its caverns. But how did it become an international tourist destination? When was the cave discovered, and how was it used prior to tourism? By exploring the Filson Historical Society's rich cave collections, we learn more about the history of Mammoth Cave through the eras. Spanning from the early nineteenth through the twenty-first century, its materials include rare guidebooks and maps, early cave photographs, manuscripts of past cave owners, books and pamphlets about Mammoth Cave, and a bottle of Mammoth Cave Bourbon. The Filson's Mammoth Cave collections have materials to entice the tourist and the scholar.

It is unclear when the cave was first discovered by white settlers, though historians estimate it was the later part of the eighteenth century. According to legend, in about 1797, a hunter named Houchin rediscovered the cave while pursuing a wounded bear that had taken refuge in it. As depicted in Carolus Brenner's Natural Entrance to Mammoth Cave (circa 1890), at that time the cave did not have the grand entrance it does today. The first written record of the cave property dates from 1798, when a land certificate for two hundred acres along the Green River was issued to Valentine Simons, the cave's first owner. A year later, the metes and bounds of the tract were recorded in a Warren County Clerk's surveyor's book; it concludes with the words "to the beginning including two saltpeter caves," called Dixon's Cave. Simons owned the cave until July 1812, when he sold it to John Flatt of Barren County, Kentucky, who sold it to brothers George and John McClean in December 1812. The next year, the McLean brothers sold a portion of the cave to Charles S. Morton of Fayette County, Kentucky, and a portion to Williamson Gatewood of Warren County, Kentucky. Morton sold his portion to Hyman Gratz of Philadelphia and Charles Wilkins of Fayette County. Wilkins also purchased Gatewood's tracts of land and established a saltpeter leaching company with Hyman Gratz. Wilkins and Gratz made great fortunes on the saltpeter found in the cave, which was essential in the production of gunpowder. It is within these land transactions that the cave is first referred to as "Mammoth Cave." Remnants of the old saltpeter vats were later documented by early cave photographers such as W. F. Sesser, who did so in 1866.¹

Natural Entrance to Mammoth Cave by Carolus Brenner (c. 1890). filson historical society

1812 Saltpeter vats photograph, taken by W. F. Sesser (c. 1866). filson historical society

By the end of the War of 1812, the cave was no longer needed for gunpowder. Hyman Gratz purchased Wilkins's tracts of land at the time of his death in 1828, thus becoming the sole owner of Mammoth Cave and lands around it. In 1839, the cave was sold to John Croghan (1790–1849). Croghan, a physician and entrepreneur, was the son of Maj. William Croghan (1752–1822) and Lucy Clark (1765–1834), a sister of Gen. George Rogers Clark. Historians believed Croghan had previous ties to Edmonson County. However, the 1901 Courier-Journal article "The Owners of Mammoth Cave: And Some New Facts about the Discovery of the Famous Cave" states that Croghan, "a resident of Jefferson County, Ky., went to Europe and while there he heard so much about the wonders of Mammoth Cave that he concluded to investigate it upon his return…and his investigation resulted in the purchase of the cave from Mr. Gorin for $10,000."

Croghan had ideas about how to use and explore the cavern. He considered the steady climate potentially beneficial in the treatment of tuberculosis and built houses in the cave to treat patients. Unfortunately, his plan proved...