Stalactites and stalagmites line the floors and ceilings of Mammoth Cave. (Credit: NPS)

National parks, sometimes called the greatest idea and always best thought of as the gifts that keep giving, have been well covered in our pages.

Protecting them, beyond what their legal status provides has been a sub-theme. Today, a story with a different niche of a sub-theme, pointing to the longest cave system in the world, protected by park status:

(Credit: NPS)

50 Years Ago, Cavers Connected Mammoth Cave and Flint Ridge

The half-century anniversary marks the connection that established Mammoth Cave as the longest cave in the world.

Mammoth Cave’s historic entrance is a natural opening that has been used by humans for 5,000 years. (Credit: NPS)

It was the summer of 1972, and Tom Brucker was in a tight spot two generations in the making. His father Roger had created a nonprofit dedicated to the research of caves (aptly named the Cave Research Foundation) alongside colleagues who were exploring the Floyd Collins Crystal Cave in the 1950s — one of the main gateways to the Flint Ridge Cave System. Two decades later, the younger Brucker was squeezing through an extremely narrow passage deep inside Flint Ridge, considered the longest cave system in the world at the time, in an effort to see if it might connect with the similarly spectacular and storied Mammoth Cave system. Continue reading →