Foreword by Robert & Johanna Titus, trade paper, 6 x 9, 344 pages, 87 illustrations. Author Dana Cudmore grew up in the middle of New York State's "Cave Country"--home to an astonishing 150+ caves including world-famous Howe Caverns and Secret Caverns. This book explores the wonder and drama in the history of the caves and describes the remarkable personal and engineering accomplishments that turned some into popular tourist destinations. It is an intriguing, surprising, sometimes humorous and very human look back at nearly 200 years of adventure in New York's most famous caves and the explorers and entrepreneurs whose courage and vision have made the caves a part of the lives of millions of visitors from around the world. Cudmore and friends explored many of the area's caves, including some of the spectacular ones that are not public and less well-known, such as Ball's, Schoharie Caverns, Selleck's, and Knox Cave. Still not rediscovered, however, is Lester Howe's legendary Garden of Eden Cave, which Howe claimed was "bigger and better" than the famous cave he discovered and opened to the public in 1842. The search continues.
Hand-in-hand with the story of the caves is the story of the stone and cement quarry that was also built on the region's unique geology, and the history of the feisty, hardscrabble community that grew up around the original Howes Cave entrance and the quarry.
Previously undocumented details taken from years of accumulated research have formed this compelling history, including such exciting recent developments as the sale of Howe Caverns and its rebirth as an adventure destination (Naked Cave Tour, anyone?), the reopening of the Howes Cave quarry, and the creation of a new, first-of-its-kind, museum dedicated to these underground empires.
"Cudmore has written a book not solely about the caves' history, but about all the history attached to the caves--the multitude of personalities and the cultural and economic tides that have swept across the Leatherstocking Country and its greatest natural wonders. ... Underground Empires is a rise, fall, rise, fall, and rise again story filled with colorful characters, high adventure, a little romance even, and some tantalizing mysteries." -- From the foreword by Robert and Johanna Titus
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dana Cudmore of Cobleskill is a retired communications professional who worked as a newspaper reporter and editor as well as a public relations director in the New York State university system. After running his own agency, Media Services, for a dozen years, he worked as an external affairs officer for a federal disaster response agency before retiring. Among other distinctions, he was a member of the original board of directors of the Cave House Museum of Mining and Geology, created in Howes Cave in 2003. Cudmore put himself through college working summers at Howe Caverns, where he developed an interest in its history and folklore. As a young man he explored many of the region's other, undeveloped caves, as well as caves in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia. He writes of his first experiences as a young Howe Caverns tour guide: The 52? "other world" of the cave offered a bit of thrill, and I was fascinated by its mysterious dark passages--some unseen and unavailable to the public. I wanted to explore and to know all I could. Cudmore's fascination with caves and Schoharie County's Cave Country eventually led to his first book, The Remarkable Howe Caverns Story (1990), which was followed by Unearthing Howes Cave: A Community and a Quarry from 1842 On (2005).
To celebrate the International Year of Caves and Karst and the great role of women in speleology. Bernard Chirol, President of the UIS Commission on History, published the book Ces Heroines des Caverns/Heroines of the Caverns - Little known history of women in the caves of the world. Speleobooks has a limited number of copies of the English language edition available. 2022. 240 pp. Paperback.
When small-town farmer and spelunking enthusiast Floyd Collins became trapped in a southern Kentucky cave in early 1925, the sensationalism and hysteria of the rescue attempt generated America's first true media spectacle, making Collins's story one of the most prominent of the century. The crowds that gathered outside Sand Cave turned the rescue site into a carnival. Collins's plight was front-page news throughout the country, hourly bulletins interrupted radio programs, and Congress recessed to hear the latest word.
With a new foreword by Tina Landau, bookwriter and director of the musical Floyd Collins, as well as a new afterword by Roger W. Brucker, Trapped! is a tense adventure and a brilliant historical re-creation of the past--a tale as enthralling today as it was when the event took place over one hundred years ago.
Robert K. Murray (1922-2019) was professor of history at Pennsylvania State University for more than three decades as well as a senior fellow in the university's Institute for the Arts and Humanities. His work includes The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration, The 103rd Ballot: Democrats and the Disaster in Madison Square Garden, and the coauthored book Greatness in the White House: Rating the Presidents--From George Washington through Ronald Reagan.
Roger W. Brucker is a lifelong cave explorer and cofounder of the Cave Research Foundation. He is coauthor of several books, including The Longest Cave with Richard A. Watson, and is also author of Grand, Gloomy, and Peculiar: Stephen Bishop at Mammoth Cave and Mama Says, Don't Cave: Ergor's Unbelievable Cave Stories (under the pseudonym Ergor Rubric). 358 Pages, Trade Paperback.
----
An eye-opening look at the 1925 news story of Kentuckian Floyd Collins, trapped in a cave near Cave City.... Both a fine historical investigative piece and a compelling read.
~Kentucky Monthly
The tension and confusion of the days of rescue attempts are made real.... The abysmally tragic efforts to capitalize on an exhibition of the cave explorer's body is not omitted.
~The Augusta Chronicle
Trapped! puts into context the importance of exploration and the role of media in accurately reporting on the accidents that can happen in original exploration.... [It] illustrates the spirit of one man's curiosity, resilience, and deep commitment to humankind's drive for expanded horizons.
~C. William Steele, international cave explorer and author of Huautla: Thirty Years in One of the World's Deepest Caves
240 PP. Hard bound. A true-life scientific adventure story, this thrilling book takes the reader deep into South African caves to discover fossil remains that compel a monumental reframing of the human family tree.
In the summer of 2022, Lee Berger lost 50 pounds in order to wriggle though impossibly small openings in the Rising Star cave complex in South Africa--spaces where his team has been unearthing the remains of Homo naledi, a proto-human likely to have coexisted with Homo sapiens some 250,000 years ago.
The lead researcher on the site, still Berger had never made his way into the dark, cramped, dangerous underground spaces where many of the naledi fossils had been found. Now he was ready to do so. Once inside the cave, Berger made shocking new discoveries that expand our understanding of this early hominid--discoveries that stand to alter our fundamental understanding of what makes us human. So what does it all mean?
Join Berger on the adventure of a lifetime as he explores the Rising Star cave system and begins the complicated process of explaining these extraordinary finds--finds that force a rethinking of human evolution, and discoveries that Berger calls "the Rosetta stone of the human mind."
World-famous since the mid-1800s, Howe’s Cave had been modernized for visitors in 1927-29 with an elevator entrance, clean paths, and electric lights. A grand reopening on Decoration Day, 1929 made Howe Caverns, Inc. one of upstate New York’s most popular tourist destinations.
Less than a year later, two of the new corporation’s employees died in the cave under baffling circumstances in the early morning hours of April 24, 1930. They collapsed near the postcard-worthy formation the Bell of Moscow.
At 5 a.m. that same morning, 7½ tons of dynamite knocked 60,000 tons of limestone from the hillside at the old cement quarry, just southeast of the cave. Had fumes from the blast found their way through the maze of caverns’ passages and killed the men more than a half-mile away? Or had it loosened dangerous gases lurking in the cave for eons?
This is the untold story of that tragedy: the rescue attempts, the investigation and coroner’s report, and finally, the legal recourse sought by the widows of the two men. Much of the story is told in vivid, first-hand accounts taken from court records of one of the cases. The testimony—by rescuers, cave experts, quarrymen, explosives engineers, doctors, and chemists under the dueling questioning of the widow’s attorney and his adversary —unravels the mystery of who was responsible and illuminates unfamiliar avenues of the dark, remarkable cave. How will the jury decide?
The Cave Electrician’s Widow:The Tragedy at Howe Caverns & Courtroom Battle for Justiceis part David vs. Goliath; part mystery, part courtroom drama, part travelogue through the fascinating underground realm of the caverns, and much more.
Includes more than 20 photos and maps to recreate for readers the entire tableau of the 1930 tragedy – both above and below ground.
In Beyond Mammoth Cave: A Tale of Obsession in the World’s Longest Cave, James D. Borden and Roger W. Brucker provide gripping first-person accounts of the discoveries, including Roppel Cave, that made Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave three times longer than any other cave in the world.
Borden, a relative newcomer, and Brucker, a veteran explorer, bring a personal and sometimes conflicting view of their roles as adversaries in a race that lasted from 1972 through 1983 to find “big cave.” They describe hazardous adventures, precarious climbs, and close calls from falling rocks. The perils are many and the trek arduous as they squirm through muddy tubes, wade in neck-deep cold water, and crawl over sharp rocks and gritty sand. Theirs is a tale of agonizing endurance spiced by spectacular discoveries.
But the cave was not the sole obstacle. The explorations were complicated by political intrigue and the rivalry between the Kentucky-based Cave Research Foundation and the Central Kentucky Karst Coalition, each seeking to make discoveries and hide secrets. Extreme stress, of course, evoked extreme behavior, ranging from selfishness to sacrifice, from outrageous humor to the deadly serious response.
Beyond Mammoth Cave includes maps by Patricia Kambesis that show the progression of cave discoveries in relation to the topography. Original line drawings by well-known illustrator Linda Heslop capture the dark mystery of the exploration. The book features five black and white photographs as a color gallery of photographs.
A sequel to The Longest Cave by Brucker and Richard A. Watson, this book is a comprehensive update of the speleological investigations in the Mammoth Cave region. Brucker’s involvement provides continuity to the investigation.
Primary authors John Dunham and Thom Engel. Editing and layout John Dunham. This spectacular 335 page once in a generation treatment of the caves in the Northeast is a monumental accomplishment. The well organized, extensive speleological, historical, and geological guide will serve as the comprehensive, authoratative guide to caves and karst in the northeast for years and years to come. As a bonus (as if any were needed!) the book includes detailed field trip guides for both of the NSS convention Sunday geo trips. A must have publication. This was a short print run with the majority being sold at convention to attendees. In our opinion this book will stand as one of the finest convention guidebooks every published.
An historical and iconographic trip to the mythic Scottish cave that became a symbol of the Romanticism. With 145 objects from the collections of the "Franco Anelli" Speleological Documentation Centre - Bologna. 2021, 80 pp. 9 x 7 1/2 inches. English language edition.
