Mammoth Cave Discoverers
Mat and Nick Bransford, who discovered and led cave tours in the 19th and early 20th centuries. (Image courtesy nps.gov)
One of the things I did in June was visit Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, and while there, I stopped in the gift shop and purchased two books. The first book told the story of how enslaved people dug out what is now the main thoroughfare of the Historic tour of Mammoth Cave, the longest-known cave system in the world. [i]
The entrance was first surveyed and registered in 1798 for saltpeter mining from the huge quantities of ancient bat guano that had accumulated over centuries. According to the Making Their Mark, about 400,000 pounds of saltpeter were removed from the cave and made into gunpowder for the War of 1812. This back-breaking work was done in dim light, sometimes almost total darkness. While the miners were digging out the saltpeter, they found all kinds of artifacts from Native American peoples going back 5,000 years.
Discoverers' Descendant
Ranger Jerry Bransford of the National Park Service is a direct descendant of the Bransford brothers who discovered Mammoth Cave. (Image courtesy nps.gov)
Later, in 1838 and then in 1839, Mammoth Cave changed hands, and enslaved men such as Nick and Mat Bransford and Stephen Bishop became guides. During those early years, a cave tour might take between 12 and 18 hours! There is a rich and storied history of the descendants of the enslaved and the emancipated miners guiding tourists, managing land, and exploring the 426 miles of cave passages mapped to date. Mammoth Cave National Park was created on July 11, 1941. Today, Ranger Jerry Bransford of the National Park Service, a descendant of Mat and Nick Bransford, carries on the tradition of this leadership.
One of the fascinations in my journey to Mammoth Cave National Park is that I have lived my entire life as an American citizen and never had I heard the stories of what went on there and what has been discovered so far. I never learned the story of the prehistoric people who first entered the caves, the Mississippi and Woodland Indian cultures that used these spaces for organized horticulture -- believed to be the first indication of independently organized horticulture in the Western Hemisphere. I did not know that enslaved people dug out the saltpeter to make gunpowder for the War of 1812. No one had ever mentioned that first enslaved persons and then their emancipated descendants were the guides and mapmakers of the largest cave system in the world and that they were unveiling the truth of this part of the earth by their labor.
It occurred to me that the people on the ground, or in this case, under the ground, were making everything happen. Without them, we wouldn't know there is life and wonder under the ground as above. Did you know there is a river in Mammoth Cave that leads to a small lake? That people used to take little boat rides down in there? It was wonderful to learn this in June of 2024; I can only imagine when the first humans saw this or then the ones who ventured later, led only by torches.
It all begs the question: who do we think are the guides in these troubled times in which we live? I am wondering if we need to look to the ones who can take us not only above but below, not only into the soaring heavens but into the deep recesses of the dark. Because to go to such places is to discover, for sure, that God’s hand has reached far and wide in all directions.
I was strangely reassured when I learned about the ones who carved the way I would walk as I descended into the cave. I was thoughtful that the family legacy I was encountering and learning about was not only one of backbreaking work, but of discovery and inspiration and showing others the way. These, for real, were people whose lives were true light despite the oppressions and falsehoods they were subjected to. Their lives were the torches held high in the darkness. I believe that their legacy, thus, was one of making a true path, a better path, a path to find the way. They committed to it, having experienced the wretchedness of its opposite. They desired to make for themselves, and for those who would follow, a trustworthy path. And now, as then, we always have to choose: will I take as my guides the ones whose lives are fashioned from such truth, or will I choose the ones whose lives are misled and misshaped from falsehood? And how will we know? Well, surely there is always the hope of the internal moral compass, but we also have the life and testimony of Jesus, who descends and ascends in love in all places and times. In my years, I would choose hands down the people who come from the rough and tumble of love and sacrifice and resurrection from death. Every. Single. Time.
Falling Water
Yosemite Valley, California. (Photo by Mary Bellon)
The second book I bought from the gift shop was a collection called "Meditations of John Muir, Nature’s Temple." It is a small and simple book divided into 60 one-page meditations, mostly taken from Muir’s journal writing while he lived in Yosemite. He writes, “The glory of the Lord is upon all God’s works; it is written plainly upon all the fields of every clime, and upon every sky, but here in this place of surpassing glory the Lord has written in capitals. I hope that one day you will see and read with your own eyes.”[ii]
Whether it is when you are out on the lake this summer, tending to your garden, hiking in the mountains, taking your kids to the zoo, kayaking the river, spelunking in Mammoth Cave or even visiting the majestic Yosemite, I hope you will let a little of God’s great handiwork set your inner course to true North. That you will allow your life to be a guide for people who are going into the underground just as much as a cheerleader for those ascending to the stars. I hope you will be a truth-teller, and live in the resurrected truth of God’s purpose for all the world to be redeemed, to be free, to be whole, and to be discovered in creative newness.
[i] Highland, Chris, ed. Meditations of John Muir, Nature’s Temple. Wilderness Press, 2001. P. 119
[ii] Lyons, Joy Medley. Making Their Mark, The Signature of Slavery at Mammoth Cave. Eastern National Park and Monument Association, 2007
The Rev. Dr. Mary Lautzenhiser Bellon is a retired clergy member of the Iowa Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. "Abiding in Hope" is a spiritual support project of volunteer Iowa United Methodists.