The Story of Floyd Collins with Chris Clark, Mammoth Cave Park Ranger: PODCAST
In the winter of 1925, the story of Floyd Collins’ entrapment in Sand Cave became one of the first international news stories via this new invention called the radio. The saga of his entrapment had the world tuning in daily for news of his rescue, earned a young reporter the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, and did not stop when Floyd finally passed inside the cave he had given his life to explore. Mammoth Cave Park Ranger Chris Clark is one of the most knowledgeable people on Floyd’s story, both befofe and after his death. We’ve put together a guide to help you understand the timelines of this tenacious explorer’s life and beyond. We also have some suggested places to visit if you’re up for a roadtrip.
Transcript:
Tony (00:00):
We are back in Mammoth Cave National Park today where we have just spoke with Ranger Chris Clark,
Ranger Clark shared with us so much about the history of Floyd Collins, his days of exploration, his days of entrapment, and it’s so many fascinating things we think you’ll want to know too. We hope you listen along.
I’m currently at Park Guide here at Mammoth Cave. Normally it’s guiding tours, educating visitors, whether it’s through hikes or cave tours. Sometimes I’ll even help out our science and resource division when it’s time to do bat monitoring, whether that’s winter or summer, whatever the need may be, and just generally trying to bring Mammoth Cave to the world.
Yeah, we appreciate that. We think it is certainly a national treasure. How long have you been with the park?
I’ve been here 12 years.
Rachelle (01:04):
Okay. And in that 12 years, you have become the home to a lot of Floyd Collins information?
Chris (01:12):
Yes.
Rachelle (01:12):
So we would love, we’re here today at, well, I’ll let you tell us where we’re here, where we are.
Chris (01:19):
This is the Collins Homestead, and we’ve got Floyd Collins house over here. We’ve got the ticket office. This is pretty much where Floyd kind of grew up, and when he got older and moved out on his own, he had a house down the ridge, a couple hundred yards, but he was still on the family farm technically.
Rachelle (01:40):
Okay, interesting. So this is his homestead? This is where his parents raised him?
Chris (01:46):
Yes.
Rachelle (01:47):
Okay. I didn’t realize that.
Chris (01:49):
Now, there was some times where the Collins family did move around some. There was some period of time, and I’m not sure of the years of that, but I know that Lee Collins moved the family to Oklahoma for a very short period of time. Okay. He did bring back with him some peach seedlings, peach tree seedlings, and pecan seedlings, and planted them out here. And I know that Bill Austin, who ran Kentucky down under, he and his wife, Judy, they had the Austin House, which is no longer here, but Bill spent thousands of dollars trying to prop up that, well, the pecan tree that was the last tree left that they knew had been planted by Lee Collins, and he had arborist out trying to save that tree. And it just, for all the money that was put into it, it was a good effort, but in the long run, it still failed.
Rachelle (02:47):
Wow. Isn’t that interesting how our travels can change the places we ultimately call home?
Chris (02:53):
Absolutely.
Rachelle (02:54):
And so they lived here. They have a long history here.
Chris (02:58):
Yes.
Rachelle (02:58):
And Floyd, and there’s a cave here as well.
Chris (03:00):
There is,
Rachelle (03:01):
Which is what the ticket office is here
Chris (03:03):
For exactly. Just a few, about a hundred yards behind the ticket office. Here is the entrance to Crystal Cave, which Floyd had discovered back in 1917.
Tony (03:13):
Okay. So was the Collins family, were they farmers? Is that what they did here on the,
Chris (03:18):
But primarily it was farming. That was their main goal or main purpose in life was farming. Floyd though, in his sort of spare time or his free time, which I know there wasn’t a great deal of it, you’re trying to eke out an existence here. Floyd would oftentimes get off by himself and he would explore the rock shelters along Green River. He would find a hole in the ground somewhere out in the woods, and if he could get an arm and a head to go, he went on in. And that’s kind of what happened with the discovery here of Crystal Cave. The story that I’ve seen the most talked about how Floyd had a trap line. He had steel traps out. He was trying to get pelt anything to make money, and one of the traps had slipped down into the autumn of sinkhole, and he went down to retrieve it and felt the air coming out. He went in crawled and pushed his way through for a couple hundred feet and he was standing up and he spent the rest of his time just seeing what was going on down there. He came out somewhere around 11 o’clock I think it was, ran into the house, told the family, get up, get up. Lemme show you what I found.
(04:37)
And I can imagine this family in their bed clothes falling through these tiny little holes
Tony (04:42):
Just to see what had been found. And so was that the beginning of Floyd’s love for exploration
Chris (04:49):
He had a love of exploration from the time he was probably a teenager. We know he was in the rock shelters. He was gathering up artifacts. He was selling those at the front step of the Mammoth Cave Hotel. He had a fellow that visited from New York that had met him in the late around 1898, this fellow from Buffalo, his name was Edmond Turner and Edmond’s talking to him about, Hey, I see you got a lot of things here. Could you find me something in particular? And Floyd’s like, what do you want? How about a skull? Yep, I got it. He goes, well send it to this address. And that kind of began a friendship with them. Even though Edmond Turner leaves Kentucky for a number of years, he comes back about 1910, and we see him and Floyd, they rekindle this friendship. Floyd’s still selling his wares, and they opened up a small cave just on the north side of the river called Dossey Domes Cave. And there was a little grocery or a little general store over there that was run by the Dossey family, and you could get a cave tour there anytime between the hours of 4:00 PM and 10:00 PM nightly.
Rachelle (06:09):
Wow.
Chris (06:10):
Because he also had a small cave on this property, which Green River is just over the hillside here, and it was called Cathedral Cave, and he was trying to get people interested with that, being closer to the historic mammoth cave, maybe get them interested and direct them over here, but not to that little cave.
Rachelle (06:30):
Interesting.
Chris (06:31):
That was here on the family farm.
Rachelle (06:32):
So there’s two caves on this property.
Chris (06:36):
There are multiple
Rachelle (06:37):
Caves, multiples on thiss this property. Okay, interesting. But two, that Floyd was actively working to get tourists to try to come and visit and selling his wares
Chris (06:50):
And selling his wares.
Rachelle (06:50):
So Floyd, how many children were in the Collins family? How many siblings? Do you know how many they had?
Chris (06:58):
Five or six, if I remember correctly.
Rachelle (07:00):
Okay.
Chris (07:00):
I may be wrong on that.
Rachelle (07:01):
Floyd was obviously this explorer slash entrepreneur that just was tenacious about whatever.
Chris (07:10):
Absolutely.
Rachelle (07:11):
The description of if he could get an arm and a head in, he would go
Chris (07:16):
Sometimes referred to as the human ground hawk because of his ability to get in such small places. Okay.
Rachelle (07:22):
Yeah. So he did that for a number of years. He was developing the visitation at these two caves, working with a friend at another cave, finding wares and selling them, and then kind of take us to where he was. Then when sand cave happened,
Chris (07:45):
When you look at the time from the latter part of the 18 hundreds, like that last decade of the 18 hundreds, early two or three decades of the 19 hundreds, it was kind of a tumultuous time here. Most of the families that had settled in what is now Mammoth Cave National Park, these were families that had descended from Revolutionary War soldiers that were given land title or land grants here. These families came in, they started harvesting the timber to build homes, barns, fencing, ties for the railroads that were about to start coming into the area. They were also clearing this land as they were cutting those timbers, and they were starting to raise some crops. Unfortunately, this area is pretty poor rocky ground. They were able to sustain themselves for a number of years. But you look into that late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, most of this good farmland is gone. It’s not yielding like it once did. These families subsisted by raising gardens, those gardens weren’t yielding as much, and they had hunted the game off of here. Deer and Turkey no longer existed in this area. Everything you see today has been reintroduced.
(09:06)
And like I said, the good timber was gone. So their monetary value for survival was almost eliminated. Somebody started taking notice of what was happening at Mammoth Cave in that last decade of the 18 hundreds. They’ve done nothing but show people a hole in the ground essentially. And everyone else is like, oh, I’ve got one. I’ve got to cave out back. I wonder if somebody would pay me to see it. That created this cave war that was so prominent in this area for a number of years. Everyone wanted their piece of the pine. They tried to capitalize on Mammoth cave being that draw for the area.
Rachelle (09:48):
So the cave wars really began in
Chris (09:51):
The late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds. Floyd, this crystal cave out here, cathedral cave out here that he was trying to get people interested in coming and seeing this was so far off that beaten path. That is one of the things that was the demise of many smaller caves in this area. But Crystal Cave he knew was the true gold mine.
Rachelle (10:19):
Oh, they say it’s beautiful. We haven’t been in,
Chris (10:21):
It is gorgeous and it’s right. I will say that some of the largest passageways, I believe, that are in Mammoth Cave can seen.
Rachelle (10:28):
Right here. Wow. That’s a big statement.
Rachelle (10:31):
But Sand Cave would have location, location, location.
Chris (10:36):
Right. You had to pass by Sand Cave to get to even the new entrance to Mammoth Cave, which was open in 1921. You would’ve gone, and that would’ve taken you the route into Mammoth Cave itself, the old historic mammoth cave. But you got Sand cave, which is the first on the line or one of the first on the line.
Chris (11:01):
So he thought, if I can just get somebody in here and get them interested in it, once again, they’ll be more apt to go to this cave.
(11:15)
He made a mistake, a fatal mistake. He had gone in towards the end of January. It has snowed terribly during the early parts of January. He is squeezing through passageways that once again, most humans couldn’t get through, but he just had a knack for how he could contort his own body to get into places. And the story was always told that he had dropped through this small passageway into this large room, and he told everyone that the walls were blackened, which made him feel like that this must’ve been something significant that Prehistorically people had utilized because it looked very similar to some of what was being seen inside the historic mammoth cave area.
Rachelle (12:08):
Okay.
Chris (12:10):
His lantern started faltering, whether running out of fuel or what. And so he starts trying to climb back out of the same passageway he had come through. He knew on his way in there was a rock he needed to avoid at all costs. He accidentally tipped his lantern over and it went out. Now, this is not just some normal size hole. If you could think about yourself trying to squeeze through a small road culvert with a lot of sharp edges, snags
Rachelle (12:46):
And rocks you want to avoid
Chris (12:47):
And rocks you want to avoid. He accidentally displaced that rock in fighting, trying to get himself up. He just couldn’t reach, it was so small, he couldn’t just reach in his pocket, get out another match where he light his lantern. So he was going to have to struggle it blindly. And like I said, he dislodged that rock and it came down and it settled across his foot, which was sitting between two other rocks. So it actually didn’t break anything, but it was just kind of hanging on to him and not letting him go. Earlier this year, I’d never seen this before, but earlier this year, I had someone mention that, well, what got him trapped was he couldn’t get his boot off. I’m like, well explain. And I don’t know how you all were, but I can remember as a kid when he got a pair of lace up boots, usually the strings were about three times longer than they should have been. And we always tied ’em behind, wrapped ’em around behind, and then tied ’em.
(13:54)
And there’s been some indication as to that happened. And that’s what trapped him ultimately, because if he hadn’t have done that, he would’ve probably been able to have slipped his foot out. Interesting. And put on through. And I’ve been doing a little bit more research with our curator, a division here, and our curator said, there’s a small article that is in our collection. She says, unfortunately it’s not here right now, but she says that talks about him having probably laced his strings behind his ankle. And that was the cause of his death. She said, but there’s no context with this article. It doesn’t tell you which paper. It doesn’t tell you when it took place or when it was written, but she says it is in newsprint of the era.
Rachelle (14:46):
How many times have we done that
Tony (14:49):
All our life?
Rachelle (14:51):
Daily. Never would’ve thought about that. How interesting. So here he was, he wasn’t really crushed. Bones really weren’t broken.
Chris (15:02):
Nope.
Rachelle (15:02):
But a combination of three rocks had him,
Chris (15:06):
That’s it.
Rachelle (15:07):
Had him trapped.
Chris (15:08):
That is it.
Rachelle (15:09):
And then everyone tried to get him out, and then everyone wanted to hear about the stories of what was happening each day as they were trying to get him out. And it just became this worldwide sensation.
Chris (15:26):
This was one of the three biggest stories of young radio that had just come onto the scene. The three biggest stories of 1925 was Lindberg Charles Lindbergh’s Crossing of the Atlantic
Rachelle (15:42):
Big News,
Chris (15:44):
The kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby and the entrapment of Floyd Floyd. This had such an impact that Congress was stopping sessions daily to hear the radio updates coming out of Cave City. And probably his entrapment is ultimately what led to the development of Mammoth Cave as a national park. Interesting.
Tony (16:14):
That incident was instrumental then.
Chris (16:18):
It was at least a catalyst.
Tony (16:20):
Yeah.
Chris (16:20):
Because the state of Kentucky had approached the federal government at least twice before I know, 1900. They’d asked Congress to make Mammoth Cave a national park, and Congress was like, no, I don’t know the exact gear, but there seems like there’s one more incident of where they had approached Congress and said, Hey. And Congress was like, no. Now you’ve got Floyd entrapped. It’s playing out. Its big news, newspapers, radio, everyone’s carrying it. And you’ve got still these people out there that are trying to make money off of caves, and they’re doing it by some of the worst business practices out there. I mean, rival cave guides were getting into fistfights out in public. There’s at least one account of a shooting that took place. Road signs getting cut down in the middle of the night. Wow. Cappers cappers.
Tony (17:23):
So when you say cave war, I mean it truly was. Literally,
Chris (17:27):
Literally. But that was because everyone was fighting for any money around here. It was survival.
Rachelle (17:35):
It was scrappy, tenacious, persist, persistent. Look at us. Look at us.
Chris (17:40):
Exactly.
Rachelle (17:41):
And so with the story, daily story on the radio of Floyd’s entrapment, I’m sure all of this information about what Mammoth Cave was like was coming out. And that ultimately caught the eye then of our government to say, perhaps it is a national treasure that should be protected. And
Chris (18:02):
From what I understand, the state of Kentucky approached Congress again like in 1926 and said, this is going to continue. There’s going to be people still dying unless we do something and end it. And if we can make Mammoth Cave a National Park, that will at least help. To slow and end this
Rachelle (18:26):
Interesting. A great sales pitch.
Chris (18:29):
Yeah, absolutely.
Rachelle (18:29):
End cave wars in one of your states by
Chris (18:34):
Exactly
Rachelle (18:35):
How interesting. I had never heard that part of the history, so that’s really cool. So let’s go back to Floyd in the cave. So January 30th, 1925.
Chris (18:49):
Exactly.
Rachelle (18:49):
He’s trapped.
Chris (18:50):
He is trapped. And he did try to free himself. He was not uncommon to getting at least somewhat trapped in caves. Well, there was one other occasion where he was trapped and they were able to get him free.
Rachelle (19:05):
So this was not his first rodeo?
Chris (19:06):
No, no. This was not his first rodeo by any means. And this one though, he seemed to have a sense of urgency. He knew he was in a bad place. He was found the following morning. There evidently was a pretty bad thunderstorm and a lot of rain that happened overnight.
Rachelle (19:33):
And you said it had been snowing.
Chris (19:35):
It had been snowing. Now you’ve got the rain showing up. So it’s just making everything around Sand cave, just a mess.
(19:44)
The two people, or three people that owned the property, which sand cave would’ve probably been on because they knew that it had to go somewhere under these properties. Floyd had made an agreement with them, put me up for the night, feed me when I’m doing exploration, and if it turns out that there’s anything here, we can get it open. Great. I’ll split the profits 50 50 with you. The two of the farmers are like, I wonder if he’s underground. Does anybody seen Floyd? This is usually when he comes. And the next morning, Ed Estes sent his son Joel down to the cave and he says, Floyd’s jacket was hanging at the entrance. And then he gets to going down in there and slips and gets out of control and hits on Floyd. And he turns eyes like, what’s going on here? And he says, I’m trapped. He said, go get my brothers. Tell ’em I’m in a fix here and I need to get out of here. And Joel went and sounded the alarm. And it’s kind of amazing too, because Floyd had struggled so much that when he was truly found, all you could see was just the tops of his shoulder and his head. That is also how unstable this passage away was. He was in,
Rachelle (21:07):
And he knew his brothers, since this was not his first rodeo, would have some idea of what to do.
Chris (21:13):
Absolutely.
Rachelle (21:14):
If anybody was going to help him, it’d probably be his brothers
Chris (21:17):
Marshall and Homer seemed to be the ones that were the most active in trying to get him out. Homer was living in Louisville, Kentucky at the time. He got word got on the train, or I think he maybe had bought a new car and was driving it down, jumped out of the car, stealing his suit,
Rachelle (21:39):
Went straight in
Chris (21:39):
And looking at a lot of the historical photographs, you see people, the workers that were digging, trying to get him out in pretty fine clothes.
Rachelle (21:52):
It was urgent.
Chris (21:53):
It there was that sense of urgency.
Rachelle (21:56):
And this was their guy. He was one of them.
Chris (22:00):
Exactly. And Homer and Marshall are working themselves just into complete and total exhaustion. Sure. A couple days after his entrapment, it’s already spreading. News is spreading. You’re getting people showing up here wanting to know what’s going on. And all they wanted to do was be left alone. Leave us alone.
Rachelle (22:27):
We’re going to figure this out
Chris (22:28):
And we’ll get him out. But people kept coming and kept coming. There was on the eighth day of his entrapment, there’s over 10,000 people. Out and around the entrance to Sand Cave, cars are abandoned along roadways, they’re parked out in people’s fields. You could get a hamburger, you get souvenirs, but leg whiskey,
Rachelle (22:57):
You can find it all.
Chris (22:57):
It was there, which is also kind of one of those points when you look at him. It’s like, man, here’s a guy struggling for his own survival and you’re out here trying to capitalize on this. That’s stuck underground.
Rachelle (23:10):
It’s kind of a carnival atmosphere.
Chris (23:12):
It was called Carnival Sunday.
Rachelle (23:15):
Carnival Sunday
Chris (23:16):
Was how they referred to day eight. And it’s a tragedy, but people were still, it was more than here’s a guy trapped underground. This is a chance for us to make a little money to survive too. So there’s a negative to it, even though
Rachelle (23:33):
They knew people were going to be there anyway. They services they were going to eat. Exactly.
Chris (23:40):
If I can make anything, I’m going to,
Rachelle (23:42):
Again, going back to the tenacity of the community, they knew what they had in the visitor.
Chris (23:51):
Absolutely.
Rachelle (23:52):
And that was a way to make a living. Fascinating. So everybody was trying.
Chris (23:58):
Everyone was trying
Rachelle (23:59):
And maybe getting in the way, I don’t know.
Chris (24:05):
Definitely getting in the way. There was a lot of people that would, when the newspapers started showing up, you’ve got people that are coming out going, oh, he’s dead. He’s dead. And they talked about how they’d taken sandwiches and stuff into him, and that was mostly lies because they would get in there. They were too afraid to be in there. They would eat that sandwich, drink whatever they had, and they shoved it in a wall pocket there and would go out and tell all this story.
Rachelle (24:35):
Oh, that’s horrible.
Chris (24:36):
There were others that said, this is just a big publicity stunt that he’s got a back way out and he’s going home sleeping in his own bed at night.
Rachelle (24:43):
I had heard that. That was told as well. So the radio stations show up, the reporters show up. They’re part of the carnival.
Chris (24:55):
They are part of it.
Rachelle (24:56):
And they are part of what you just described as these tales that are being told about, well, I took food to Floyd, or He’s exiting every night and this is all staged. And Molly shared with us that there was a story of Floyd’s girlfriend and his dog waiting for him outside, which he didn’t have a girlfriend and he didn’t have a dog. Right. Obie. Huh?
Chris (25:23):
Obie.
Rachelle (25:24):
Obie was that the dog.
Chris (25:25):
Obie was waiting for him during the rescue, and then Obby disappeared.
Rachelle (25:29):
Oh, well, as Obie would if he were fictionalized
Chris (25:32):
Or was stolen.
Rachelle (25:33):
Oh, was
Chris (25:34):
There’s actual pictures of Obby with I think Homer at the rescue. So he was actually there. But somebody took off with ob.
Rachelle (25:44):
I understand. But it became, everybody wanted to keep this it behooved also the radio stations and the newspapers that needed to be sold to continue this story.
Chris (25:57):
Oh, absolutely. And the more, not that anyone would sensationalize anything.
Rachelle (26:03):
Never.
Chris (26:03):
It’s amazing, some of the articles I’ve seen, because there’s one article that shows a picture or a rendering. A drawing of what Floyd’s Predicament was. And they were saying that he has a seven ton rock on his foot, seven ton. And he’s in this big open area. He’s just kind of laying on his stomach. But I mean, he’s in this big open area and it’s like, no, if that was a seven ton rock, he would already be dead.
Tony (26:29):
So I don’t guess that during this time there was a lot of professional search and rescue teams, people that equipped to be able to go down there and dislodge the rock and free him.
Chris (26:49):
Exactly.
Tony (26:51):
So all of this was relatively new
Rachelle (26:54):
Or non-existence.
Chris (26:55):
The closest thing probably that anyone had that would be anywhere similar to this would be anyone working in the coal mines of that area, because that’s about the only other thing, or I shouldn’t say coal mines, but mines in general. But here it would be coal mines for us, but somewhere else, it may be a mineral mine. Sure. Old or silver copper. And you might have teams that have a little bit better experience with that, but not when you’re talking about caves. This is a foreign thing. I came across some letters recently where there was a fellow from Kansas that had sent a letter talking about what they should do, how he had worked in the gold mines out west, and you ought to be able to sink this shaft or get this down to him. And as I continue reading the letter, he’s going, well, it might work. So he’s already doubting himself.
Rachelle (27:54):
Sure.
Chris (27:54):
So why would we try something that we don’t know is going to work in the first place? They knew? One of the suggestions that he made was to dig out a little bit of area around it, and you could do that by drilling a few holes and putting some sticks of dynamite in there.
Rachelle (28:13):
Oh, that sounds like a great idea.
Chris (28:15):
And if you’re worried about it hurting him, Mr. Collins, you can put some planks up over it to keep it from sending the rock.
Rachelle (28:25):
That should solve the problem.
Chris (28:27):
Oh, it should solve it perfectly. And it’s just kind of amazing. But towards the end of that letter, he’s like, I think it’s already too late and that reality.
Rachelle (28:37):
But he still sends the letter,
Chris (28:38):
But he still sends the letter. And so I find that even if people can’t be here, they’re trying to at least offer their suggestions. And one thing is for certain, you could never just discredit anything because you don’t know.
Rachelle (28:54):
You don’t know.
Chris (28:55):
Somebody might send you something that you have not even considered before. Right. The whole rescue effort, because of where he was laying and how unstable that passage was, no one wanted to use dynamite. There was such a fear when they started with the rescue shaft that if they were to use dynamite, it would just completely collapse where Floyd was laying. So they were using hand drills to drill out through solid rock working 24 hours a day. Just you worked until you got so tired, you couldn’t go any further. And then somebody else would pick up while you rested. And there was one article in a paper that was trying to give hope, I think, that talked about how they were making progress at about one foot an hour. The reality of it was about four inches an hour, and they would had hoped that they could get to him. They were going to have to drill a shaft down almost 70 feet to get to him.
Rachelle (30:04):
That’s a lot of hours.
Chris (30:05):
That’s a lot of hours. And these men are out there. I mean, they’re doing the work. They’re trying. It’s a spirit that I don’t know that we necessarily always see in today’s era, but it didn’t matter, stranger or not, here you are. Yeah. You’re going to try your best.
Rachelle (30:25):
And at that rate and that tedious and hard work that must’ve been to build the shaft, it would’ve taken anybody who would’ve been willing to have tried for a little while.
Chris (30:36):
Absolutely.
Rachelle (30:37):
Four inches an hour is just keep it going.
Tony (30:42):
So what was the cause of Floyd’s deaths? The actual cause? Exposure. Exposure. So it wasn’t being crushed by debris. Nope. Debris or
Chris (30:57):
One of the things, so on about day two or three when the media starts showing up, you got this young cub reporter from the Louisville Courier Journal that comes down named William Skeets Miller. And he was a very small statured man who was able to get into where Floyd was. He’s truly the one that was taking the food and the water and talking to Floyd, he was working at digging and trying to get him out. At the same time. The last thing his editor had told him, said, whatever you do, don’t go into the cave. And here’s Marshall and Homer sitting outside of the cave. And he’s like, what’s the story guys? They’re like, you want a story? Go get it yourself. And then they go and he goes, he managed to, with the help of others, get a light bulb hooked up, took some burlap wrapped around that. There was oil cloth that was put over the top of Floyd to divert water that had been dripping on him for over 12 hours.
Chris (32:02):
This light bulb was kind of placed up close to Floyd’s head and neck to give him some warmth.
(32:08)
It was also kind of tied into a light bulb that was rigged up outside of the cave entrance. And they were able to know that nothing had changed in there because on about day nine or 10 of this rescue effort, there is a collapse that shuts off them. Even having any communications with Floyd. One of the people said that he’s okay. He should be fine. The bulb outside is tied into that. If the rocks had come down and shifted, it would’ve crushed the globe on the light, which would’ve meant that the rocks had crushed Floyd’s head. Everything’s good. Day 13 is when the light bulb went out, probably just a light bulb that failed that was inside, and that’s when that coolness finally started overtaking him not being able to move around. You’re just laying there. Your moments are numbered at that point.
Rachelle (33:20):
You’re in the elements in the winter
Chris (33:22):
You’re there.
Rachelle (33:22):
Yeah,
Chris (33:23):
Exactly.
Rachelle (33:26):
And at that point, the shaft was not completed.
Chris (33:31):
It was not complete. It took another three days or from the time the light went out, it took another three days. So 16 days, day 16 is when they break through to where he is laying, and they send the doctor down to check on Floyd, and he comes out and tells the family, I’m sorry, it’s too late. He was in such a predicament. The rescue shaft that was being done was very unstable. When Carnival Sunday hit, things were completely out of hand. The sheriff and deputy in Cave City, that was all the law that was in the area. They were unable to control this mob.
Chris (34:19):
There’s no way they could, they were getting drunk and getting into fistfights out here that had nothing to do that had never been in the cave. More than likely they declared Marshall Law here and brought in National Guard to keep the peace. They strung up barbed wire. They had the guards out here and is like, Nope. Unless you’re doing something with the rescue, you are not allowed in here. And if you went behind, if you went through that fenced area, you’re going to work. You’re not going to go to gawk.
Rachelle (34:52):
Yeah. We didn’t know that.
Chris (34:56):
That kind of brought a little order to everything, which was helpful, but it was still a lot of work. General Den Hart that was over that effort. When they found out that Floyd was dead, he’s like, look. He goes, this is not a rescue. This is a recovery, and we’re not going to risk anybody else’s life. If you want your son out, you’re going to have to find a way on your own. The decision was made to fill that shaft back in. They held a funeral service right at the entrance of the cave, and Floyd laid there. So about six weeks, Floyd’s dad, Lee Collins and his brother Homer, went out on the vaudeville circuit, which was big at that time. They were talking about the experience in the rescue, the events leading up to Floyd’s entrapment the rescue. And what they were doing was raising money to be able
Rachelle (36:07):
To bring him out to get someone
Chris (36:08):
That could actually get him out. And it was some local coal miners from a couple counties over that got him out finally to where he got his second funeral.
Rachelle (36:21):
Okay.
Chris (36:22):
Floyd, at the end of this ticket office, just out the edge of the woods was where Floyd was buried.
Rachelle (36:29):
Okay. Is there his
Chris (36:31):
Real burial, so to speak?
Rachelle (36:33):
Okay.
Chris (36:33):
Okay.
Rachelle (36:34):
Is there a family cemetery there or was that just where they decided?
Chris (36:38):
I’m talking about a hundred feet from where we’re
Rachelle (36:41):
Staying
Chris (36:42):
Or where we’re sitting is where he was originally buried. Now things we’re pretty rough still because we’re getting ready to get closer and closer to the depression, even though we’re a couple years ahead of it. Lee Collins was approached by HP Thomas and Dr. Thomas came over and said, I’d like to buy the cave. And Dr. Thomas was kind of getting into this whole cave mogul ownership thing. He was really into it. He loved the adventure of it. He owned Hidden River Cave there in horse cave. He owned Mammoth Onyx Cave and Horse Cave as well. And he wanted to put this crown jewel in his collection. And he offered Lee Collins a substantial amount of money for that time, $10,000. And Lee sold the cave
Rachelle (37:42):
And the entire property.
Chris (37:44):
Well, the entire property and all the rights there unto which meant anything underground, including Floyd. Yes. Yeah. Dr. Thomas had Floyd dug up and put him into Crystal Cave. There was a glass top put on his casket. And when you took a tour, I think the signs out on the roads actually said, come cave with Floyd Collins, the discoverer of Crystal Cave. And when you walk down into the cave of the first big room, there’s Floyd, his headstone right there.
Rachelle (38:28):
And Floyd stayed there for
Chris (38:30):
A couple years, and then someone broke into the cave and stole Floyd, and it created a manhunt of swords. There were Bloodhounds brought out. They did find him the next day,
Rachelle (38:47):
Another rescue attempt,
Chris (38:49):
Another rescue attempt, and someone had tried to throw him over the bluffs at the Green River hoping he’d never be found again. He was found, he was brought back and returned to the cave. But Dr. Thomas had a solid top put on. He put even log chains around it to keep that from happening. There were enough links in that log chain that you could still let people see by lifting the lid just a little bit morbid to think, why would you want to see this man? Let him rest in peace. But yet there’s still that curiosity. I think we all have.
Rachelle (39:31):
Well, especially if it had been such a huge news story for these people who had now traveled to see. It takes a long time, even for us today, to get here. So
Chris (39:49):
I kind of equate it to when they had some of the mummies on display, not just the Egyptian mummies, but the mummies at Mammoth Cave that were on display. It’s that curiosity of what are they like? Huh. Let them rest in peace. Yes. That’s the big thing.
Rachelle (40:08):
Yeah. And Floyd is now,
Chris (40:10):
He is finally the Collins family petition for Crystal Cave. This property was one of the last two in holdings within Mammoth Cave National Park. As this park was established. Great on Cave and Crystal Cave were the two pieces of property that were worth far more than what the state of Kentucky could pay to get the land secured to make Mammoth Cave National Park. Even though these properties were condemned, the state of Kentucky still had to pay for them to come under the Park service and great Onyx cave managed to hold on until June or July of 1961. But for Crystal Cave and the Collins property, it came in June of 60, 19 60. Okay.
Rachelle (41:03):
And Floyd was still in the cave?
Chris (41:05):
He was still in the cave
Rachelle (41:06):
At that point. In 1960,
Chris (41:08):
The Collins family began petitioning the park to have him removed, to give him a proper burial. And in 1989, that became a reality.
Tony (41:16):
It was from the sixties until finally, until 1989. Wow.
Chris (41:25):
In 1989 he was finally brought out of the cave, but Flint Ridge Road out here was closed down during this time to allow Park service and family to get Floyd put we in a proper grave and for the Collins family to have a proper final burial for him.
Rachelle (41:44):
That’s very touching.
Chris (41:46):
It is.
Rachelle (41:46):
I mean, it is because if I’m doing all the math right, of course. He died in 25. Dr. Thomas bought this
Chris (41:58):
1927.
Rachelle (42:00):
So he had been in the cave basically since 1927.
Chris (42:05):
Yes.
Rachelle (42:06):
Except for the detour.
Chris (42:09):
Except for the week or a few days that
Rachelle (42:11):
He was near the river again.
Chris (42:13):
Yes.
Rachelle (42:16):
Wow. And then you said he is buried now at Mammoth CaVe Baptist
Speaker 4 (42:22):
Baptist Church
Rachelle (42:23):
In the cemetery there. And that happened in 1989.
Tony (42:27):
Yes, ma’am.
Rachelle (42:28):
That’s a significant portion.
Tony (42:30):
That’s quite a few years.
Rachelle (42:32):
Decades.
Tony (42:32):
Yeah. 52 years.
Rachelle (42:34):
Yeah. It really brings a different slant to the phrase rest in peace.
Chris (42:41):
Yes.
Rachelle (42:42):
Because Floyd’s life after death now, Floyd’s existence after death was so tumultuous.
Chris (42:53):
It almost seemed to be at the point of he’s still being used as this sideshow attraction because sand cave, I don’t know that there was ever tours in the sand cave, but there were all these signs along the roadways for it. There’s men standing out there with the rock.
Rachelle (43:18):
Oh, of course.
Chris (43:18):
That trapped him. There are men standing out there with the lantern. He used his shoes that he used.
Rachelle (43:24):
So it became its own sideshow.
Chris (43:28):
It was a sideshow. But once again, this is a period of time where everyone in this area is struggling.
Rachelle (43:33):
Sure,
Chris (43:34):
Yeah. Survival meant everything.
Rachelle (43:36):
Sure.
Chris (43:37):
You want to leave your ancestral lands, you got to figure out. If you don’t want to do that, you got to figure out how to survive.
Tony (43:45):
Had this happened in a different time period or setting, it may not have been as tumultuous of a time.
Chris (43:55):
Probably. If it happened today, it would not be.
Tony (43:57):
Yeah.
Chris (43:58):
And whenever I do my evening program about this entrapment, they know this is quite the obsession. February will mark 100 years of his passing and that event, that tragedy that happened there at Sand Cave, and there’s still such an obsession with it where people want to know. And that in itself is incredible. This fellow still has impact a hundred years later.
Rachelle (44:30):
And why do you think that is? What do you think it is about the Floyd Collin story that still has us fascinated?
Chris (44:40):
That spirit of exploration? Self-reliance, I think are the big things that kind of bring people in. Try to, we still want that. Our lives a lot of times have diverged because maybe technology or the jobs that we have to do to survive sometimes don’t allow us for that spirit of exploration,
Rachelle (45:08):
That tenacity. Absolutely. I just think about how tenacious he must have been.
Chris (45:12):
He was incredible
Rachelle (45:14):
To have always been pushing through and always been seeing what was next.
Chris (45:21):
Absolutely.
Rachelle (45:22):
Yeah. I would say that you have that nailed correctly.
Tony (45:27):
Yeah. Not being afraid of what he is about to discover possibly.
Chris (45:34):
I think for him, a lot of it was the wanting to know what’s next? Yeah. What’s around band? What’s around this next band up here? I think that is that curiosity to want to know where does this go? And I think that’s pretty incredible. On his part, he had the
Tony (46:00):
Iron grit
Rachelle (46:02):
Evidently to
Tony (46:05):
Being able to travel somewhere that no one else had ever been, to be the first to set foot.
Chris (46:11):
We talk about the moon, or now we’re talking in the fifties and sixties. It was all about the moon. Now it’s about Mars. This is still one of those places the average person won’t always get to see. We can’t see it from the surface. You have to go in and push not just the boundaries, but your own boundaries if you want to know what’s going on.
(46:37)
And that’s also incredible. This cave got a lot of attention before it came under the park Service. Probably one of the biggest things that led to the connection of this cave with Mammoth Cave was one started out as one of the greatest jobs in history because Bill Austin and his uncle, Dr. Paul, they were having the National Physiological Society Annual Convention. That’s a group of CERs. Were having it right here in the Mammoth cave area. Bill was probably in his fifties at the time, much older, and they were like, Hey, we got this cave you might want to check out. We took ’em over to Hidden River Cave. Oh, this is nice. Took ’em to Mammoth all. He said, oh yeah, yeah. This is nice. I don’t think that they probably wouldn’t want to do another cave. What do you got? Well, come on out and we’ll talk about it. Bill and a guy named Jack Berger took four, four or five guys on an 18 hour, 16 hour trip.
Rachelle (48:00):
Wow.
Chris (48:01):
And that started the birth truly of the Cave Research Foundation, which still does active exploration to this day. It started right here at this Floyd’s house was a field house. This area was used for this ticket office had bathrooms and a shower. So this is truly where that ultimate exploration, that desire has continued
Rachelle (48:29):
Ground zero. Ground zero. And the Cave Research Foundation, they’re the ones responsible annually for reporting how much more of Mammoth Cave has been discovered. Correct.
Chris (48:41):
Yes.
Rachelle (48:42):
And
Chris (48:43):
They’re underground starting this either later today or tomorrow. Thanksgiving expedition begins and they’ll be here through Sunday.
Rachelle (48:53):
They spend hours and days,
Chris (48:55):
Hours, days still with that same spirit of, oh, we’ll see what’s around the next curve.
Rachelle (49:03):
And pretty much, I mean, I know we can’t say always, but there’s pretty much always annually, some amount of feet, inches, whatever that is added to the length of Mammoth Cave, which is the longest known cave system in the world currently each year by the Cave Research Foundation, or is that correct? That’s correct. I mean, they pretty much always succeed in finding more,
Chris (49:30):
A little bit more each and every trip.
Rachelle (49:32):
And then the things that have been found recently with the fossils and the shark fossils, and there’s so much to explore down there. Oh, exactly. Bringing it back to Floyd, I was just thinking one of the tragedies of his death is that people may have not known everything he had learned. If he’s talking about Sand Cave being black down there, then he understood a great deal about prehistoric uses of the cave and things like that. You think about how much he had seen, I hope he shared with someone all that he had learned about human behavior prior to what he was seeing.
Chris (50:22):
Hopefully. But doubtfully,
Rachelle (50:23):
Yeah. So that’s another piece of the tragedy, right. That we lost.
Chris (50:29):
How much of his knowledge of the cave itself was lost with his death.
Rachelle (50:35):
Yeah. How old was Floyd?
Chris (50:37):
37. 37
Rachelle (50:39):
Young.
Tony (50:39):
Wow.
Chris (50:40):
So very young still.
Rachelle (50:41):
Yeah. So yeah. Well, thank you so much. Thank you all for sharing with us about Floyd and all you have come to know. And is there anything we’ve missed that asking you that you think, oh yeah, those listeners are going to want to know that.
Chris (50:58):
You’re welcome. The one thing that I keep thinking about that time and people that couldn’t even get here were sending donations $1, $3, $5.
Rachelle (51:12):
That’s a fascinating
Chris (51:13):
Deal. There’s a couple that sent like $20, and I think about 19, 20. That was a lot of money. That’s a big deal. And these people, the ones that are given like a dollar or $2, they’re embarrassed that that’s all they can give. But they may not have physically been able to get here, but they still wanted to help in some small way
Rachelle (51:38):
It’s touching.
Chris (51:39):
It’s amazing what that $1 or $2 went to help feed the people that were here actually struggling trying to get Floyd out.
Rachelle (51:52):
That’s really touching. And so it wasn’t just the community, it wasn’t just Floyd’s community that was behind him.
Chris (51:58):
It was everyone.
Rachelle (51:59):
It was whole nation.
Chris (52:01):
I came across one letter from a fellow in San Diego. Sent like $5. He was not very happy with the way things were going. He chastised basically all the locals for making Lee Collins have to spend his own money to get his son out. But still, here’s the $5,
Rachelle (52:26):
Right?
Chris (52:28):
You’ve got church groups. You’ve got church groups in Tennessee, Alabama, and Texas that are sending donations that are between 50 and $60. And that had to be a tremendous amount of money for those churches to send. But they wanted to do something
Rachelle (52:49):
That’s very touching for the people to want to contribute to helping Floyd get to a place of being buried on his family’s property. Is there any notations about how much that actually did cost the Collins family for the retrieval?
Chris (53:09):
I don’t have that number. I don’t think I’ve ever come across it anywhere.
Rachelle (53:13):
Yeah, I’m sure it was significant for that time.
Chris (53:17):
Oh, I’m sure it was.
Rachelle (53:18):
It would be. Anytime
Chris (53:19):
There was something that came across one of the articles. It was taking something like a thousand dollars pay every four or five days to feed the people that were actually working. Wow.
Rachelle (53:35):
During the rescue
Chris (53:35):
Portion? During the rescue portion of it.
Rachelle (53:38):
That was so much money back in 1925.
Chris (53:42):
Oh, a tremendous amount. That might as well be a hundred thousand dollars. Sure.
Rachelle (53:49):
It’s fascinating. It was a totally different time.
Chris (53:52):
It was.
Rachelle (53:53):
And had the cave wars not been in action, it would’ve probably been even different. All the things that play into everything that happens with any of our lives.
Chris (54:04):
Absolutely.
Rachelle (54:06):
But really different. Thank you so much for the
Chris (54:09):
Thank you all.
Rachelle (54:10):
Not just the explanation of what happened during the entrapment, but Floyd’s experience is after his death, if that’s the way to say it. And also helping us understand what the culture here was leading up to and enduring. So it’s been great talking to you.
Chris (54:30):
Thank you all.
Rachelle (54:31):
Yeah. Thanks for coming and hanging out with us.
Chris (54:34):
Glad to do it.