According to legend, at the turn of the 19th century, a Kentucky hunter named John Hutchins found

a black bear and shot.

He failed to kill the bear and it ran, wounded,

while Hutchins gave chase until it led him to the entrance of a cave.

Some say the Bearchase Hutchins who either way is credited with the modern discovery of a cave system that spraws for nearly 400 documented miles, so large that it is

yet to be fully mapped, and may go on for up to a thousand miles. On this episode of America's national parks, the world's largest cave system,

Mammoth Cave. On the ceilings and walls of Mammoth, one can find thousands of names, written in smoke from a time when such a thing was encouraged.

One of the oldest and most prolific names sometimes written

backward is simply Stephen. Stephen Bishop,

Mammoth's most famous explorer, would take his candle to the ceiling and trace his name, sometimes in reverse

due to the mirror he was looking in to avoid the wax stripping in his eyes.

In 1838 the 17-year-old Bishop was brought to explore and lead expeditions into Mammoth by the

Cave's new owner, Franklin Goren, a lawyer from nearby Glasgow, Kentucky, who purchased the property seeing the cave's potential as a public attraction.

Previously, the cave had been used as a Salt Peter mine during the War of 1812 when slaves mind valuable potassium nitrate, a primary ingredient

and gunpowder. Bishop quickly got to work guiding tourists and exploring the depths of the cave and creating its first map.

This is what Gorman had to say about Bishop.

He was handsome, good-humored, intelligent, the most complete of guides, the presiding genius of this territory.

He has occupied himself so frequently in exploring the various passages of the cavern that there

is now no living being who knows it so well. of the intelligence and untiring zeal.

He's extremely attentive and polite, particularly so to the ladies.

And he runs over what he has to say with such ease and readiness and mingles his statement

of facts with such lofty language that all classes, male and female,

...