Blue Spring Cave HB
Tennessee's longest mapped cave with over 35 miles of surveyed passages. Although its natural entrance has been known since prehistoric times, only 500 feet of cave had been explored as recently as 1989. In that year a group of cavers pushed a tight, blowing crawlway at the rear of the cave and discovered miles and miles of fantastic, virgin cave passages. Exploration still continues as this book goes to press.
Follow along with the modern explorers as they describe their exploration of this underground wonderland, mile by mile. The path was not simple or easy and required long-term perseverance to slowly unravel this underground labyrinth. In the process huge passages and rooms were discovered along with rare and beautiful cave formations. Divers have recently pushed in from Blue Spring for over a mile in flooded cave passages. A connection has not yet been made to the air-filled passages, but they are getting close. The story of their exploration is exciting and dangerous.
This book is lavishly illustrated with photographs and maps. Each chapter will actually show you where the explorers have gone and what they found. The maps will enable you to follow them further and further from the entrance. This book will treat you to the complete exploration of Blue Spring Cave since the breakthrough in 1989 up to the present.
By Larry E. Matthews and Bill Walter
2010
346 pages, hardbound
A review by NSS Member Bill Mixon: Blue Spring Cave, the longest in Tennessee with over thirty-five miles of passages, is one of the few exciting finds in Tennessee since the exploration of Cumberland Caverns back in the 1950s. Long known as just a 500-foot cave, Blue Spring exploded after a tight, blowing crawl was pushed and enlarged in 1989. Most of the major passages were surveyed during the first half of the nineties, although work continues, including making a new entrance in 2001. During all this time, cavers enjoyed the hospitality and support of interested landowner Lonnie Carr. The cave is mostly horizontal, although there's a blind 150-foot pit located 4.7 miles from the entrance. Divers have penetrated a significant distance into the resurgence spring, but have not connected it to the cave so far.
As is the case with all the NSS books on the history of Tennessee caves, the authors should really be considered editors, as most of the text is quoted. In this case, there are some reports previously published, but also a lot of new material written for the book by many participants in the exploration. Sometimes more than one person has written about the same trip, giving different perspectives. Almost every page contains a large black-and-white photograph, generally well printed. Most are very nice photos taken recently by Bob Biddix; some by Elliot Stahl are also praiseworthy. There is a twenty-page section of color photographs. I prefer the black-and-whites, because the color balance in many of the color photos is suspicious. There is a small-scale map of the cave spread over two pages, and a few detail maps. I wish there'd been more of the latter and that more place names mentioned in the text, including landmark station numbers, had been put on them. The book ends with a glossary, a chronology, a gazetteer, and an index.
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