The death of a Kentucky cave explorer a century ago is being remembered as a catalyst for the formation of Mammoth Cave National Park.
Cave City native Floyd Collins has been the subject of books, songs and even a musical since his death in 1925.
His final days sparked international attention, but his legend continues today.
Collins sat trapped for over two weeks in a cramped sandstone cave as thousands fixated on his rescue outside.
To the world’s disappointment, Collins died before he was freed — but 100 years later, park rangers at Mammoth Cave and even living relatives of Collins hope to focus on the good that emerged from the tragedy.
Collins & The Cave Wars
Mammoth Cave’s human history extends beyond writing, with mummified remains of Indigenous people dating long before the colonial period found within the cavern.
The proliferation of steamboat travel along the Green River in the 1800s opened the floodgates to local tourism. Mammoth Cave, being the largest and most accessible cavern nearby, became the focal point of tourists from across the country.
The journey from the steamboat to the cave meant a window of opportunity for other cave owners, who fought — sometimes physically — to poach travelers who passed by. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Cave City were defined by the “Cave Wars” fought by local landowners like Collins and his family.
Collins was born on his family’s farm in 1887 and began exploring nearby caves by the age of six. Kentucky’s karst topography, which allows caves to form more easily from softer, soluble rock, gave Collins ample opportunity for spelunking.
Mammoth Cave Park Guide Jackie Wheet said dozens of local caves were first discovered and explored by Collins, either for recreation or profit.
“He had the reputation of going beyond most human endurance limits and where most people would turn around,” Wheet said.
In 1917, he discovered what would become Great Crystal Cave, which was hidden on his family’s homestead several miles east of Mammoth Cave.
“He started digging the rocks out and feeling the air rushing, so he began crawling and just like a little snake wiggling through these cracks,” Wheet said. “It opened up into a good-sized room, then went down to a crawl again.”
The Family Gypsum Garden
It was more than just a geological discovery — it was a new lifeline for the Collins family. Collins used dynamite to blast a wider entrance into the cave and worked tirelessly to clear paths for visitors to navigate.
Cave resource management specialist with the park, Rick Toomey, said Crystal Cave is impressive even by modern standards, with its wide caverns and flower-like gypsum formations that burst from the wall. Much of the cave seems to sparkle under lamplight thanks to shiny mineral flecks that have seeped from the walls over thousands of years.
“Crystal Cave is an absolutely fantastic cave, it is beautiful,” Toomey said. “The Collins family had a wonderful show cave there, but — like with real estate — in show caves, it’s ‘location, location, location.’”
The Collins family endeavor yielded little as more accessible caves raked in the attention. Collins eventually set out to find a cave closer to the main road to better compete in the Cave Wars.
He asked one family for permission to explore a cramped passage that became known as Sand Cave less than a mile from the road to Mammoth Cave, offering the owners a partnership if it proved a viable business. He spent several weeks learning the layout and opening up more accessible passages for guests.
Collins arrived at the cave as usual on Jan. 30th, 1925, and hung his coat just outside. He squeezed his way through claustrophobic corridors that barely left space to breathe, some reportedly less than a foot tall, according to Toomey.
Collins had so far explored countless caves. Sand Cave would be his last.
A Trap as old as Time
Trickles of water from the earth’s surface 10 to 15 million years ago carved out the stone that would become Sand Cave.
Somewhere along the way, a slab of sandstone loosened from the wall and sat waiting.
Collins was deep within the cavern when his gas lantern began to dim. He turned around and retraced his path, groping through the low light on his stomach toward the surface.
Amid one narrow passage, roughly 60 feet below ground, his leg brushed against that stone in waiting. The trap was sprung.
In a moment, its crushing weight pinned Collins’s leg in place. The narrow gap meant Collins could hardly see below his waist, let alone maneuver to escape.
“Imagine stepping in a bear trap and it closes on you,” Wheet says. “You just can’t pull yourself out of it, so he can’t go forward or backward.”
Collins struggled for freedom but only succeeded in knocking more sediment loose, trapping him further. The cave walls hugged his chest and pack, preventing him from even seeing his legs.
There he lay alone, watching the light dim and die. A day passed.
Wheet says the family who owned the land took notice of Collins’s absence and noticed his jacket still sitting at the mouth of the cave.
The only person able to navigate the caves was the 17-year-old son of Sand Cave’s owners. The boy crawled deep enough to speak with Collins and confirm his dire state.
“He crawls in far enough, yelling ‘Floyd, are you down here?’ and he hears Floyd yell back, ‘I’m trapped – go get my brothers.’”
Locals rushed to tell the Collins family, including brothers Homer and Marshall Collins, who came to Collins’s aid.
Neighbors in the tight-knit community also got word and offered help, some squeezing through the narrow passages to bring food and water.
Those brave enough to make it to Collins attempted to dig him out to no avail.
By Feb. 1st, two days after Collins became trapped, Marshall Collins offered a $500 reward to anyone who could free his brother — the equivalent of nearly $10,000 today.
‘The story’s down there’
By day three of the rescue, Collins’s health was quickly deteriorating. Loved ones labored ceaselessly to free him.
Word spread north to Louisville, where editors at the Louisville Courier-Journal took an interest. They sent down freshman reporter William Miller — a 20-year-old Louisville native, known to friends as “Skeets” on account of his small, “mosquito-like” stature.
Upon arriving, Miller met Collins’s relatives at the cave’s entrance and asked for an interview.
“His dad just points at the cave and says, ‘The story’s down there — if you want it, go get it,” Wheet says.
Miller’s small size came in handy as he pulled himself down to Floyd, but the news story quickly became a second thought.
“As he’s talking to Floyd as a reporter, he starts becoming very empathetic for this guy in this terrible situation and says, ‘I can’t just ask him questions and leave,” Wheet says. “So he spent hours trying to dig Floyd out.”
When his efforts failed to free Collins, Miller opted to pray with him and bring down meals.
An emergency rescue team soon arrived but similarly came up short. Around 200 people now crowded beyond the cave, some selling coffee and meals to onlookers.
The crowd continued to swell the following day as rescue efforts became more desperate. The National Guard arrived to keep onlookers at a safe distance and to monitor the rescue effort.
Collins’s story was soon shared in newspapers and radio programs nationwide, often including segments of Miller’s interviews in the cave.
Businesses from across the state offered their skills to rescue efforts, with some suggesting pulling Collins free by rope — with or without his leg.
As rescuers argued over best practices, Collins shivered and starved. His only source of warmth was a string of electric lights draped into the cavern. Wheet says the crowd outside only created more issues.
“People are getting cold out here waiting to find out what is happening, so they’re building bonfires out here to keep warm. That’s melting the snow, and where’s it running? Right down on Floyd.”
Miller and others traveled back and forth to Collins, desperate for a breakthrough that would free him.
Crews noticed another issue on Feb. 4th — large cracks had formed in the cave’s walls and ceilings, worn down by tired rescuers and desperate loved ones.
Bits of rock tumbled down on Floyd as rescuers retreated.
Then, a great crash of stone and earth sent tremors through the crowd.
“There’s a rockfall,” Wheet said. “This collapse in the passageway prevents them from reaching Floyd after that.”
The thin copper wires of his string light were all that connected Floyd to the outside world.
A Carnival for Cavers
The next several days offered a constant stream of disappointment and frustration.
Attempts to find an alternative passage to Collins proved unsuccessful, and the growing attention from the public meant packed roads and headaches for local residents.
“This was all brand new to everybody, there weren’t organized cave rescue teams and things like we have today,” Wheet said.
Kentucky Governor William Fields placed National Guard Brigadier General Henry Denhart in command of the rescue, which turned toward carving a mineshaft through the rock to Collins.
Denhart estimated the effort would reach Collins after around 30 hours of digging. It was hard, intensive work, leaving laborers in need of medical attention and rest.
Despite the intense effort, crews only dig around 17 feet by the next day — roughly a quarter of the way to Collins. Toomey added that laborers had to be careful of explosives and intense digging that could cause another rockfall, potentially killing Collins and his rescuers.
All the while, throngs of reporters, movie makers, businessmen, preachers, bandwagoners and more brought Cave City to a standstill. Some journalists resorted to making up details to fill space in their newspapers before the next deadline.
Guardsmen fixed barbed wire to the area to maintain a perimeter and the National Red Cross took over care for rescue workers, who’d so far subsisted on crackers, coffee and hard liquor, according to an account from the park.
Reporting from Miller and others became a constant fixation for radio stations and newspapers nationwide. Wheet said Congress began taking regular breaks so they could listen to the latest updates on the rescue.
The chaos culminated on Feb. 8th for what became known as “Carnival Sunday.” A wave of roughly 10,000 onlookers flooded into the area to hopefully see Collins pulled from the earth.
“Think about this — the town of Cave City only had a population of about half that,” Wheet said. “Twice the population was out here in the middle of nowhere, looking at a hole, hoping that they’d see Floyd come out soon.”
A mix of revelry and anger flooded the crowd. Some drank and partied in a festival-like atmosphere, while others levied accusations of mismanagement and fraud against those brought in to rescue Collins.
Some believed the whole thing was a hoax — that Collins simply left the cave in secret each night, or in fact was dead from the beginning. Others believed Collins had been purposefully neglected to continue drumming up media attention.
This negativity, coupled with rain the following days, hung heavy over rescue workers. Some lost heart and quit as a military court of inquiry was called in to dispel rumors of fraud.
Feb. 12th came with snowfall and slow progress still. Collins by then had been trapped for 13 days and he had not eaten for a week.
The rickety rescue shaft now descended roughly 50 feet. It’s possible that Floyd heard the picks and shovels faintly in his final days underground.
By Feb. 15th, the anticipation is palpable, but crews are at the end of their rope. They had worked through heavy fog and rain for several days, even as two feet of water pooled at the bottom of the shaft.
Roughly 5,000 people waited just beyond Sand Cave to see Collins unearthed.
Then, an opening. Crews burst an opening into the passage where Collins was trapped over 17 days around 1:30 p.m. on Feb. 17th.
“They see him, and he’s gone,” Wheet said. “He had passed away, they believe, a couple days before that.”
Collins lay lifeless, having succumbed to cold and starvation. The nation mourned.
Officials confirmed the cause of death and noted Collins likely died several days before on Feb. 13.
Rescuers were forced to retreat as their mineshaft slumped dangerously above them. Collins’s leg was still pinned, forcing crews to leave his body and seal the shaft behind them.
A funeral service was held in the following days, but it took several months for his brothers and other loved ones to fund another excavation.
Collins’s remains were finally uncovered in April that year. He was buried on his family’s homestead on a spot that overlooked his Great Crystal Cave — at least, for a time.
A Coffin with a View
The international attention on the area inspired Congress to authorize Mammoth Cave as a national park in 1926.
“Because of the media attention this got, this brought back to the forefront the importance of protecting and preserving the Mammoth Cave system and this region,” Wheet said. The idea had been discussed on and off for over a decade, but World War I put such conservation efforts on the back burner.
The government accepted the first land donations that year and added another 8,000 acres in 1929, though many nearby caves continued to operate privately.
The remaining members of the Collins family sold their homestead (and their Great Crystal Cave) in 1927 in part to escape the continued attention the accident had brought them.
Local dentist Harry Thomas, who also owned and operated nearby Mammoth Onyx and Hidden River Caves for tourists, purchased the land in the hopes of capitalizing off that attention.
Thomas had an idea that would blow his competition out of the water. He had something no one else had.
He had Floyd Collins.
Thomas dug Collins from his grave and placed him in a glass-topped coffin. Collins laid on display within Crystal Cave as countless tourists passed by on their tour, despite protests from his living family.
In 1929, Thomas discovered Collins was missing from Crystal Cave. A search uncovered his body discarded nearby, though the leg that had pinned him in Sand Cave was missing.
Locals speculated a rival cave owner had attempted to sabotage their competition by throwing Collins into the nearby Green River. Toomey, however, has his doubts.
“Thompson… was quite a showman,” he says. “I don’t put it past him that this was a story planted by Crystal Cave to drum up additional business.”
The perpetrator was never found, though Thomas made efforts to better secure the remains. Collins was placed deeper within the cave, chained within an iron box for decades.
Mammoth Cave continued to grow around the property, officially forming the national park in 1941.
The park acquired Great Crystal Cave in 1961 and immediately closed the attraction off from the public. The largely undeveloped cave entrance proved too risky for regular tours, meaning only park officials and researchers were allowed access in the decades to come.
It became a valuable resource for studying the underground environment, especially the crickets and bats who would otherwise be botherd by tourists within Mammoth Cave.
All the while, Collins remained inside.
Conversations between park officials and Collins’s family led to an effort to reintern his remains in 1989 — over 60 years after his first funeral.
He now rests at Mammoth Cave Baptist Church Cemetery. His tombstone, often adorned with stones, coins and flowers left by park guests, reads “Greatest Cave Explorer Ever Known.”
Yet one reminder remains of Collins’s postmortem treatment — a rusted iron box, about the size of a coffin, sits half-buried inside Crystal Cave.
A Century Later
Mammoth Cave is known today as the largest cave system in the world, stretching over 400 miles beneath the Kentucky soil.
New segments and passages are still being discovered, sometimes connecting massive passages that were previously thought to be separate. The most recent discovery was in 2022, adding another six miles to the total length.
An expedition in 1972 discovered that Collins’s Great Crystal Cave and Mammoth Cave indeed shared an underground network, despite their entrances sitting roughly three miles apart.
The national park averages half a million visitors each year, generating tens of millions of tourism dollars. It covers over 82 square miles of Kentucky countryside, where conservation corps have reclaimed swaths of farmland for conservation efforts.
None of it would have happened without Floyd Collins, and park officials like Wheet know it.
“The national park is also about preserving the stories of the pre-park families that lived here and not forgetting those people, because they played a vital role in what we have today,” Wheet said.
To honor the anniversary of Collins’s death, the park is hosting a series of 16 exclusive tours visiting Collins’s homestead, gravesite, an overlook of Sand Cave and Crystal Cave.
Tickets were awarded late last year through a lottery. Over 6,000 spots were requested, though just over 300 guests will get to participate.
Molly Shroer, the park’s public information officer, said the limited scope of the tours is due to Crystal Cave’s logistical issues that could make it unsafe for some guests. That could change in the future, she added, but any renovations would be years off.
“The cave itself is not really developed anymore,” Shroer said. “It has not been touched since the 1960s, that’s the last time public tours went in there. We still use it for (research opportunities), but this is a very special opportunity to get down into Crystal Cave.”
The park is also hosting two panel discussions the weekend after the anniversary. The first reflects on the life and legacy of Collins, while the second brings in experts and Collins’s living relatives for a panel conversation. Officials say the programming offers a different view of Collins’s legacy, one that often gets lost in the sensation of his final days.
“When we talk about Floyd Collins, most people know him because of his tragic death. In reality, Floyd was a pioneer of cave exploration,” Wheet said. “He was one of the founders of his field. Think of Jaque Cousteau or Amelia Earnhardt, they were willing to push the boundaries and go where most people wouldn’t go. Floyd was doing that in the field of caving.”
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, and WEKU, WKMS and WKYU in Kentucky, along with NPR.
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