Mammoth Cave and the Making of Place

Abstract

Occupation, use, and symbolic construction of place in the Mammoth Cave region of Kentucky has resulted in five distinct eras of place-making during the past two hundred years. The connectedness of Mammoth Cave to the larger national stage is revealed through struggles over control and development that wrought successive transformations upon the cultural landscape. The symbolic import of the world's largest cave altered as, in turn, resource extraction, tourism, and environmentalism became the dominant ideology influencing development in the Mammoth Cave region. This paper positions the process of placemaking at Mammoth Cave within the changing scene of American society and culture.

Cave Microbes as a Potential Source of Drugs Development in the Modern Era

“…It is a limestone cave that encompasses approximately 80 square miles and is 365 miles long (explored to date, the endpoint remains undiscovered). For thousands of years, water seeping from the limestone ceiling has formed thousands of stalactites [ 31 ]. Animals living in the caves have undeveloped eyes, long antennae, and a lack of pigment [ 32 ].…”

Dark Degenerations: Life, Light, and Transformation beneath the Earth, 1840–circa 1900

“…Indeed, the cave was intensively marketed -by both successive and competing owners -in order to lure throngs of visitors to stalk its darkly sublime labyrinth, many of whom were drawn to the cave by the lure of an otherworldly underground spectacle. 25 An 1845 description by British traveller Alexander Clark Bullitt neatly conveys the otherworldly imaginings of this dark domain: 'the lamps in the canoe glare like fiery eye-balls and the passengers sitting there so hushed and motionless look like shadows. The scene is so strangely funereal and spectral.'…”

Underground Tourists/Tourists Underground: African American Tourism to Mammoth Cave

“…Mammoth Cave, located in the karst region of west-central Kentucky that is particularly rich in caves, sink holes, and other limestone dissolution features, was discovered by Anglo Americans as the region was settled in the 1790s (Algeo 2004). Native Americans had used it for thousands of years before that, extracting gypsum and flint and leaving evidence of having explored it to great depths.…”