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Stuff You Missed in History Class

The Kentucky Cave Wars

Stuff You Missed in History Class

iHeartPodcasts

History, Society & Culture

4.223.6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2024

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the 19th century, Kentucky's Mammoth Cave launched an entire, very competitive cave tourism industry in the area, In 1925, Floyd Collins was trapped in the cave system, which was the beginning of the end of the cave wars.

Research:

  • Algeo, Katie. "Mammoth Cave and the making of place." Southeastern Geographer, vol. 44, no. 1, May 2004, pp. 27+. Gale In Context: Science, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A119615129/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=f1adfa5b. Accessed 29 July 2024.
  • Bullitt, Alexander Clark. “Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, During the Year 1944, By a Visitor.” Louisville, KY. Morton & Griswold. 1945.
  • Butler, Telia. “Throwback Thursday – The Kentucky Cave Wars.” WNKY News 40. 3/25/2201. https://www.wnky.com/throwback-thursday-the-kentucky-cave-wars/
  • Courier-Journal. “Cave Company is Cited by Dawson.” The Courier-Journal. 7/24/1927. https://www.newspapers.com/image/107046993/
  • Lanzendorfer, Joy. “Enslaved Tour Guide Stephen Bishop Made Mammoth Cave the Must-See Destination It Is Today.” Smithsonian. 2/6/2019. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/enslaved-tour-guide-stephen-bishop-made-mammoth-cave-must-see-destination-it-today-180971424/
  • McGraw, Eliza. “How the Kentucky Cave Wars Reshaped the State’s Tourism Industry.” Smithsonian. 7/25/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-kentucky-cave-wars-reshaped-the-states-tourism-industry-180982585/
  • Meloy, Harold. “Short Legal History of Mammoth Cave.” National Parks Service. https://npshistory.com/brochures/maca/short-legal-history.pdf
  • "Mammoth Cave National Park." Britannica Library, Encyclopædia Britannica, 4 Sep. 2015. libraries.state.ma.us/login?eburl=https%3A%2F%2Flibrary.eb.com&ebtarget=%2Flevels%2Freferencecenter%2Farticle%2FMammoth-Cave-National-Park%2F50412&ebboatid=9265652. Accessed 29 Jul. 2024.
  • National Park Service. “Early Native Americans.” Mammoth Cave. https://www.nps.gov/maca/learn/historyculture/native-americans.htm
  • National Park Service. “Floyd Collins.” Mammoth Cave National Park. https://www.nps.gov/people/floyd-collins.htm
  • National Park Service. “George Morrison.” Mammoth Cave National Park. https://www.nps.gov/people/george-morrison.htm
  • National Park Service. “Prehistoric Cave Discoveries.” https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/prehistoric-cave-discoveries.htm
  • National Park Service. “Stephen Bishop.” Mammoth Cave National Park. https://www.nps.gov/people/stephen-bishop.htm
  • National Park Service. “The Kentucky Cave Wars.” Mammoth Cave National Park. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-kentucky-cave-wars.htm
  • National Park Service. “Tragedy at Sand Cave.” Mammoth Cave National Park. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/tragedy-at-sand-cave.htm
  • Ohlson, Kristin. “The Bransfords of Mammoth Cave.” American Legacy. Spring 2006. https://www.kristinohlson.com/files/mammoth_cave-2.pdf
  • Schmitzer, Jeanne Cannella. “CCC Camp 510: Black Participation in the Creation of Mammoth Cave National Park.” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society , Autumn 1995, Vol. 93, No. 4 (Autumn 1995). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23383772
  • Sides, Stanley D. and Harold Meloy. “The Pursuit of Health in the Mammoth Cave.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine , JULY-AUGUST 1971, Vol. 45, No. 4 (JULY AUGUST 1971). https://www.jstor.org/stable/44450082
  • Tabler, Dave. “The Kentucky Cave Wars.” Appalachian History. 4/19/2017. https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2017/04/kentucky-cave-wars.html
  • Trowbridge, John. “The Kentucky National Guard and the William Floyd Collins Tragedy at Sand Cave.” 2/10/2021. Kentucky National Guard. https://ky.ng.mil/News/Article/2648067/the-kentucky-national-guard-and-the-william-floyd-collins-tragedy-at-sand-cave/

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on I-Heart

0:04.8

Radio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people

0:09.7

you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the

0:24.4

weird little guys trying to destroy America.

0:27.0

Listen to weird little guys on the I-HeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

0:30.2

or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:46.0

Every week on Talk Easy with San Fragoso, I invite an artist, writer, or politician to come to the table and speak from the heart in ways you probably haven't heard from them before. So my favorites are with Tom Hanks, Questlove, and Cape Blanchit.

0:50.0

In recent weeks I had thought to actor Dan Levy, director Ava Duvernay, and the editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick.

0:57.0

You can listen to Talk Easy on the I Heart Radio Appel Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

1:05.0

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tory spelling,

1:13.4

as she takes us through the ups and downs

1:15.7

of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage.

1:19.7

I just filed for divorce.

1:22.8

Whoa, I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.

1:28.8

Wild.

1:30.0

Listen to misspelling on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

1:35.4

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.

1:47.0

I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.

1:52.0

Not too long ago I read a novel called Starling House by Alex E.

1:57.0

Harrow. This is a work of fiction, but it has footnotes that reference local history research from that fictional setting.

2:05.8

And then there's also a bibliography that includes some entries that are based on actual published

2:11.9

research from the real world, but kind of tweaked to fit in with the setting of the book.

...

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