>> Support for "Journey Indiana Underground" is provided by: JL Waters, helping people fulfill adventures in the great outdoors with advice, gear, and more.

JL Waters, located on the square in downtown Bloomington.

Limestone Country, offering an outdoor playground of southern Indiana tourism, with Bluespring Caverns, Spring Mill State Park and more, all explorers can experience outdoor adventures.

More at limestonecountry.com.

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And by members like you.

Thank you!

>> Best thing about Indiana caves... >> Well, that's a -- that's a -- >> You put me on the spot.

Uh -- >> Uh.

>> I'm gonna betray things a little bit and say there are probably other caves that are more enjoyable.

>> Because the caves in Indiana -- I mean, they're known as wet, muddy and miserable.

>> That's just -- that's the standard for Indiana caving.

>> But you do it, and you have fun doing it.

And even if you don't enjoy it when you're laying in the water and your nose is on the ceiling and you are freezing to death, it makes a great memory when you come out.

>> The caves here in Indiana, what I really love about them, is how diverse they are.

>> You've got your muddy caves.

You've got your dry caves.

You've got your pit caves.

>> You can be in one of the largest cave systems here in North America if you get into the Binkley system.

You can go into Wyandotte Cave and explore just the history of how humans have utilized those areas.

>> One thing that you find in Indiana caves that you don't find too many other places, is really the idea of these endless stream systems like we have here in Bluespring, like they have in Indiana Caverns.

They just go on and on and on.

>> You just got a little bit of everything right in your backyard.

>> Honestly, I am a Hoosier through and through, and I will love Indiana until the end of my days, and that's what makes Indiana caves special.

>> Yeah.

Why should you go somewhere else when you have good stuff right here?

>> And so the rolling hills of southern Indiana is just a pretty sweet place to be if you're a caver.

♪ >> Narrator: The Hoosier state is home to a host of natural wonders, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and caves.

And the story of Indiana's caves begins many thousands of years ago with glaciation.

>> All that ice scoured over the state.

It covered up where the caves are up in the northern part of the state.

There are caves up there.

It's just that they are glacially filled with sediments.

In the southern part of the state, we have this sort of a converted triangle of an area that was not glaciated, the highlands areas.

>> Narrator: These areas are known for karst, a fancy word for a simple concept.

>> Karst is surface or terrain features that indicate that there's solution going on underground.

>> Narrator: Features like springs, sinkholes, and disappearing streams.

>> We're in what we call the sinkhole plain.

It's kind of like nature's plumbing system.

Any rainwater that falls on the earth here goes down in these sinkholes, goes down mostly through small cracks that -- places you don't even see.

>> The surface waters get underground by going down into the limestone, flowing through it and the fractures, and enlarging those fractures by solution and erosion.

And eventually those streams get big enough that we can fit into, and that's the caves.

>> Narrator: Indiana is home to thousands of caves.

And we'll explore a few of them over the course of this program.

Our first stop is near the northern-most edge the sinkhole plain in Lawrence County.

♪ ♪ >> Spring Mill State Park is 1348 acres.

It's known for several different things.

One is the pioneer village.

It's an actual, living village.

It was active in early 1800s to the late 1800s, but we're also home of the Grissom Memorial.

>> Narrator: The Grissom Memorial pays tribute to Virgil "Gus" Grissom, a Hoosier native, distinguished Air Force pilot, and one of NASA's seven Project Mercury astronauts.

Grissom's NASA career spanned nearly a decade, ending with his tragic death on January 27th, 1967.

Inside the park's memorial, visitors encounter the story of a man who explored the unknown, sometimes miles above the earth's surface.

Outside, visitors are encouraged to explore something much closer to home, often right under their feet.

>> Spring Mill State Park, it's in the Mitchell karst plain, which is a karst featured with limestone.

And so you get to see a lot of sinkholes and caves.

>> All of which are part of the Shawnee Cave system.

>> Donaldson Cave is probably the most well-known opening in the state.

It's very recognizable.

Twin Caves is where the roof of the cave had collapsed, and so it created two openings, Upper and Lower Twin Caves.

Hamer Cave has a unique history.

It was the source of water for the gristmill in the pioneer village, even when it was operating back in the 1800s.

Bronson Cave is just sort of the in between, between Donaldson Cave and Twin Caves.

It is a jumping off point.

You enter at Bronson, and you come out at Donaldson.

Generally, it takes about two hours to go on the terrain.

You do get wet.

>> Narrator: That trip requires significant expertise and a permit, but the park's most popular cave experience, enjoyed by thousands each year, is open to just about anyone.

>> We offer cave boat tours up into Upper Twin Caves.

We have two custom-made boats.

We have guides, and roughly 13,000 people a year go through those caves at eight people per boat.

>> All right.

So how are you guys today?

>> Good.

>> Good.

Glad to hear it.

My name is Maddie.

I'm going to be your tour guide today.

Something you should know about us here in Lawrence County, Indiana, we are very famous for our limestone.

This limestone used to be pretty solid, and then water would dissolve the limestone and create these caverns, cracks, fissures like we see now.

The reason it's able to dissolve it is because the water's slightly acidic and the rock is basic.

And so if you remember from high school chemistry, acid dissolves bases, and so that's how we were able to end up with our full cave.

>> If the water is clear, we're able to show folks blind cave fish.

>> And the blind Hoosier cave fish was discovered here in this cave.

He'd never been found anywhere else until he was discovered by an IU crew in the 1890s.

They did a lot of work in these caves.

Not only are they blind, they don't have eyes at all.

Instead of having eyes, they use other senses, such as their sense of touch and hearing to make their way around the rest of the cave.

If you shine the light on them, they actually don't have any idea that you have the light on them.

And they just have feelers to make their way through the rest of the cave.

There is a -- two blind cave fish right there.

Two blind cave fish.

You look right over there, shine the light on the ceiling right there, you've got a really large stalactite growth.

Now, it takes a stalactite about 100 years to grow a single inch.

So knowing that, that stalactite is several thousand years old.

>> We have one small spot where you can see formations, but it's a very small area.

That cave still floods.

So there's no real good spot for cave formations.

It would have to dry out for that.

>> If you guys look at the wall, you can see where it's darker, and then it kind of turns light.

Where it's dark, that's about as tall as the water will get.

It doesn't get much higher than that.

And that is when we have a big rain.

♪ >> Narrator: Tours, like this one, have informed and inspired Spring Mill guests for more than 70 years.

>> Got it?

Perfect.

There you go, girl.

>> Narrator: And the park's caves have introduced thousands to the state's subterranean treasures.

>> Recreational caving is really part of our mission that we have here in Indiana State Parks.

And with all the caves we have, we get a little bit more interest.

So it's a great place to start to see if you are interested in caving.

>> Narrator: Another place to gauge that interest is at Wyandotte Cave, located just a few miles west of Corydon, this area has been wowing visitors for more than 150 years, but that's only a small part of the story.

>> The Native Americans that were in the cave were prehistoric.

There's no recorded history.

The only thing left is signs of their use in the cave, torch fragments and petroglyphs and things like that.

Pat and Cheryl Munson is a husband and wife anthropology team out of IU that did studies in the 1980s and '90s at Wyandotte, and they carbon dated some artifacts in the cave as many as 4,000 years ago.

>> Narrator: These early explorers also found useful materials in the caves, like flint, chert, and aragonite.

And there's evidence that these were traded extensively.

>> Wyandotte flint, as well as aragonite, has been found as much as 500 miles away.

As far away as Iowa, as far south as into Tennessee and Southern Illinois and Ohio.

>> Narrator: European settlers rediscovered the caves in the late 1700s or early 1800s.

In 1890, the Rothrock family moved from New York to Harrison County and purchased thousands of acres.

Included in their new Indiana home, a largely undiscovered natural wonder.

>> But they didn't really think much of the cave itself, as far as having the cave or know what to do with it.

They bought it primarily for the timber.

Timber was their big industry, and the gristmills on Blue River.

>> Narrator: That all changed with a significant discovery in 1850.

>> A section of the cave was found and explored that contained Monument Mountain and several miles of cave passage.

Word spread even more, and more and more people started coming, I want to see your cave, Mr. Rothrock.

So he decided, well, maybe I ought to start a venture and start charging people who want to come see my cave.

>> Narrator: With that, one of the earliest commercial caves in the United States was open for business.

>> They didn't become millionaires with it, but it was reasonably successful.

The heyday of the cave, when they had it, was probably in the late 1920s, definitely the '30s, '40s, '50s.

During a lot of those years, they would have 40,000 to 50,000 visitors at Wyandotte Cave.

♪ >> And remained a show cave under Rothrock family ownership until 1966, when the state of Indiana bought it.

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources manages the cave today and continues to show it as a show cave.

♪ >> We have basically two cave tours that we present to people.

We have Little Wyandotte or the small cave tour, which takes about a half hour to go through.

♪ >> You get to see a lot of the formations that a cave is known for.

♪ >> If you want more of what we consider a rugged tour, you have our two-hour route, which is in Big Wyandotte.

>> So the cave stays at a natural 52 degrees all year round.

So it's gonna be a little chilly.

Some of you guys might find that really nice.

And some of you guys might want a sweatshirt.

Everybody stay to the side, we've another tour coming through here.

>> And you get to see more of the big rooms, and it's what Wyandotte is known for, is the bigger rooms.

This is the longest single room that we have in the cave.

From the entrance that we just walked into, to the exit that we're gonna leave at, it is 400 feet all the way across.

It's quite a ways.

It's like a football field and a third.

From standing down here, you can see that the shape of the big strap of limestone, that changed.

So right down here we call this Big Chief Wyandotte's Footprint and right over there, we call that Little Chief Wyandotte's Footprint.

It's like his son following in his footprints.

>> We give some history there.

>> This used to be the entrance into the cave.

People would come down here, they'd go through this room, and they'd go immediately right up there.

It wasn't until 1850 that two guys were sitting right here.

One guy struck a match, and the flame from the match started being pulled that way.

They started snooping around, and they realized that there's a passage down there.

That new passage made Mr. Rothrock's taxes skyrocket.

They went from $50 to $500.

This area right here, this is called the Bats Lodge, because when those guys discovered this passageway and they came down here, there were thousands and thousands of bats lining the ceilings.

The reason the bats liked it so much, and the reason they still like it, is because of this mineral right here.

You can kind of see patches of it.

This is gypsum.

It's really easy for the bats to cling onto so they can hang upside down.

>> You get to see what's known as Monument Mountain.

That room is about a quarter mile in circumference.

You are about 422 feet below the surface.

And from the bottom to the top of the stalagmite is about 130, 140 feet.

Our main thing is getting people underground and seeing the cave.

Once we get people down in the cave, they're telling their friends, family, hey, you gotta go back and see this.

So it's something that if you haven't seen, you need to come and check out.

>> Well, that's about all I have for you guys.

So thank you for coming.

>> Thank you!

Bye.

♪ >> Narrator: Indiana's caves are home to a variety of creatures, the northern cave fish, cave salamanders, cave spiders, and, of course, bats.

>> Caves are very important for bats because it's the one place they can go where they're not getting harassed.

It's dark.

It's quiet.

They can go in there.

They can rest and save a lot of energy.

>> Narrator: But that refuge has been disturbed.

>> What's happened with bats here in Indiana and in North America is this new disease called white-nose syndrome.

It's this fungal pathogen that thrives in cave environments.

It's like humans getting athlete's foot.

It's really itchy.

It's uncomfortable.

You know it when you have it, and for these bats that are trying to sleep through the winter months, if they feel itchy and uncomfortable, they are gonna wake up more often, causing them to leave the caves and try to find food before food is available on the landscape.

And they end up starving to death in the middle of winter.

>> White nose was first discovered in a New York cave in 2006, and first detected in Indiana in 2011.

In just a handful of years, millions of bats died nationwide.

In order to slow the spread and better understand the disease, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources needed a plan.

>> And the quickest response was just simply close the caves to access.

That was the quickest response.

♪ >> Then after a couple years, we felt that we came up with a pretty decent plan to allow caving back in, and it's primarily to make sure that cavers know how to decontaminate themselves after entering a cave.

>> I have one more thing to talk to you guys about.

I think Kelly told most of you guys who went to the Little Cave about the foot wash and the white-nose disease and stuff like that.

All right.

So when you get to the top of the hill, I just need you guys to do it again.

Just walk through the foot wash and clean all of the spores that may or may not be on your shoes, and we'll all be cool.

>> Some cave systems, like Carlsbad Caverns, Mammoth National Cave, as well as Wyandotte, have decontamination stations set up outside the cave.

That way you don't accidentally spread it to another cave system.

Now, if you are not an avid caver and you're not going to different caves in the same day, the same week or even the same year, maybe that's something you don't need to worry about.

But if you are an avid caver, just making sure that you decontaminate your gear as you move between caves here in Indiana, and especially as you move between caves between Indiana and around the world.

So just being mindful of what you're bringing into and taking out of the cave.

>> Narrator: And these efforts, from the entire caving community, are paying off.

>> Even though we saw significant losses here in Indiana, the bats are starting to recover.

So we're at the bottom of the trough in terms of mortality that we've seen from white-nosed syndrome, and now we're starting to see a comeback.

Some of it is bats moving into caves here in Indiana because they offer different habitats that these bats can use to fight the disease themselves.

A little bit of it is reproduction that we're seeing right now, and so we're just trying to manage bats and manage caves in such a way that gives bats the freedom and the peace that they need to do what they do and repopulate.

>> Ben Hains was a photographer from New Albany, Indiana.

He became interested in taking stereoviews.

Now, stereoviews are kind of the predecessor to the modern day postcards.

It's actually a dual picture, and then you have to have a stereoview viewer to look through, and it gives you kind of a 3-D look.

He took a lot of cave pictures, not only in Wyandotte Cave, but in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, Luray Caverns.

And he would get these stereoview pictures published or printed and then sell them as sets.

We know of at least 60 different shots he took inside Wyandotte Cave.

And you think, well, you know, taking pictures, a lot of people probably did that, but to take pictures in a cave, which is totally dark, you gotta have a light source to do that.

Probably early on he used magnesium flares, which would give a bright intense light, but the problem was the magnesium flares gives off a lot of smoke.

And all of a sudden, you think you're gonna get a good shot in the picture, and all you've got is white smoke.

So they came up with flash power.

This was late 1800s, and the flash powder worked a lot better.

It gave off a bright, intense light that he could use to take pictures with, but didn't have nearly as much smoke.

♪ They were very good pictures, and practically no one else was doing it at the time.

♪ >> Narrator: For some, caving is more than just a weekend trip to a show cave or a state park.

It's practically a way of life.

And for these intrepid few looking for like-minded souls, there are caving clubs, also known as grottos.

>> We're just a collection of cavers that enjoy the sport, and that's why we are here.

Whether you are into cave exploration or just to tour caves or cave photography, there's a lot of different avenues to get involved in.

>> Narrator: Indiana's earliest grottos formed in the 1950s.

Today, there are a handful located around the state, each providing a valuable, local resource.

>> A person could probably find caves and go caving themselves, but they're probably not gonna know how to do it safely.

They are not gonna know how to do it and not damage the caves.

Just an individual finding something on the Internet is not gonna learn how to do those things.

>> Narrator: And that's where the grottos come in.

They provide education, and perhaps most importantly, opportunities for caving.

>> Nobody wants to belong to a grotto or a club if they can't go caving.

So it's essential to have regular monthly trips and big outings like Cave Capers where people can get together and feel like they are a part of something.

♪ >> This is the 71st Annual Cave Capers, and it's a gathering of like-minded people that are interested in everything that has to do with caves.

>> Gosh, it's just a big party, really, entertainment the entire weekend, dancing, music, games, camping all weekend, and cave trips for, you know, the beginner, kids, families to experts.

>> Narrator: 2024's Cave Capers took place in Lawrence County, just outside of Mitchell.

For four days, Camp Rivervale was home to hundreds of cavers, most were from Indiana and the surrounding states.

Others traveled a bit further.

>> Yeah, traveled about seven hours from the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina.

I have never caved in Indiana before.

So this is my first time, and I'm super, super stoked to get underground here.

>> I think it is the premier Midwest event to go to.

You know, there are other events, but there's just nothing like going to kind of your hometown caving event and you see so many friends and like-minded people.

>> You know, in the old days, I think it was more project caving focused and more closed knit, it was cavers only, and we're very inclusive.

We try to get anybody involved that wants to.

It doesn't have to be a project trip.

You don't have to go, you know, lay in water, with only one eye peeking out, digging on something or surveying.

You can just go and have fun.

>> Narrator: In fact, the most dangerous part could be the nightly sign-up stampede.

>> Three, two, one.

>> Happy New Year!

>> For trips this weekend, we have everything from beginner trips, where it's like extreme hiking is what I would like to refer to it as, and it only gets more difficult and challenging from there.

We have some caves that you have to rappel into.

And we have some that are pretty technical rigging with ropes too.

So Cave Capers, you're gonna have 45 trips, and I just don't think anybody else matches that.

>> Narrator: One of those nearly four dozen trips took place in Endless Cave, part of the Cave River Valley natural area.

♪ >> Narrator: And if you miss out on a trip or just looking for a change of pace, you can always check out the gauntlet.

>> People have been to Gatlinburg and they'll see these adventure courses with ropes set up.

That's kind of what the gauntlet is for a ropes course.

It's much, much more extreme.

All of these skills from the gauntlet are something that you could or would see in a caving scenario for real.

And they have a dry scenario.

They have a wet scenario.

They have tubes that you have to go through while you're still on rope.

And if you don't know these skills, they'll help you get better at them, maybe teach you them from scratch.

It's a lot easier to get help and instruction when you are doing it out here in a tree than it is trying to learn underground with, you know, a waterfall pouring over you or something.

>> In 2025, Cave Capers is headed south to Harrison County.

>> Between now and then, learn some rope skills, because that's a vertical playground.

Lots of caving down there to be done on rope.

Come see us.

We'll take you caving if you haven't been.

We'll take you caving if you have been.

Just come see us.

I think Cave Capers is the best caving festival around because it's more family oriented, more caver friendly, and I like to think we offer more caving trips probably than any of the other festivals around too.

You come here and you make friends.

If you spend hours underground soaking wet in tight spaces with people, you just become a lot closer friends than you would in any other scenario, I think.

And, I don't know, it just keeps you coming back because you want to see these people again.

♪ >> Cave River Valley has been around for a long time.

It was a private campground for years.

And we had the opportunity to purchase the land.

It's 314 acres.

I really say it's like a mini Spring Mill.

Here in Spring Mill, we have two dominant caves, Hamer Cave and Donaldson Cave.

At Cave River Valley, two dominant caves, River Cave and Endless Cave, but it also has a historical tie.

The Hamer Brothers, which ended up running the mill here at Spring Mill, actually went and worked for a gentleman by the name of Hammersley, and they learned how to do the milling there.

Then they moved over to here, started managing this, and then took it over.

So we have a historical tie and we also have the natural history tie-in.

But it's a really unique property.

It's a great place to visit.

We keep it very primitive.

Big, large portion of the property is nature preserve, but we are going to continue to manage it natural.

We're not gonna really do -- see any development there.

But it is just another feature that we offer with Spring Mill State Park.

>> The Indiana Karst Conservancy is a land trust.

So we own preserves, and we're the only land trust in Indiana that focuses specifically on protecting and conserving karst and cave landscape throughout Indiana.

>> Narrator: The Indiana Karst Conservancy, or IKC, was formed in 1986 by a group of dedicated and concerned cavers with a clear mission.

>> There was a lot of cave vandalism going on, a lot of inappropriate visitation, and some of our caves that we actually own today were some of the caves that were being sort of overutilized, and maybe by folks who didn't really respect the cave.

So that's when the IKC kind of started with, hey, we want to see visitation of caves, but we want to see something that is a little more sustainable, a little more conservation oriented, and how can we, you know, really honor these cave systems that are so awesome in our state.

>> Narrator: Initial protection efforts while successful weren't universally accepted.

>> The IKC started out with doing some management, such as working with landowners to have their caves gated.

And there were some cavers that weren't super excited about that.

They felt like the IKC was coming in, and that was their cave, and now why is there a lock on my cave?

And so it took quite a while, but even some of those people who didn't really feel like it was the best idea in the first place, kind of see the value of that now.

>> Narrator: In the decades since its founding, and following the successful protection of several caves, the IKC's mission has evolved.

>> That's where we've gotten into owning the properties, being concerned about the surface, the watersheds, because caves don't live in a vacuum.

>> Narrator: Today, the Indiana Karst Conservancy owns seven properties in five southern Indiana counties, and you don't have to venture underground to enjoy them.

>> We do four field events a year, kind of quarterly, and it's to invite folks to our properties.

It helps our members become more familiar with our surface and the work we're doing, and it also attracts new folks who maybe don't know anything about us and aren't necessarily a part of the caving community.

So in addition to owning our own preserves, we also help agencies and organizations with access to their caves.

>> Narrator: Agencies like the Nature Conservancy and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

>> Endless Cave, over at Cave Valley, IKC helped us by building the gate that controls access.

IKC had early on helped us with a gate for a small cave here in the park called Whistling Cave.

>> Narrator: The IKC has also assisted Spring Mill State Park with cave surveying and mapping.

>> We got a better idea of where our caves were going.

With just 1300 acres, cave passageways go beyond our boundaries.

So we need to understand where the water flow is coming from, the watershed for all of these caves.

So we've had a long-term relationship with IKC.

>> Narrator: Additionally, the IKC manages cave access for landowners of private caves.

>> We have volunteers that are cave patrons or access managers.

They are the point person.

So the landowner does not have to worry about somebody knocking on their door, asking, can I come visit your cave?

That volunteer of ours can handle that portion for them.

Although, we are a conservation organization, we feel strongly that there should be responsible access allowed into caves.

You gotta go see it to love it.

♪ If the IKC did not exist, I feel like we would have caves that did not have access.

We would also have caves that continued to have not responsible access, and we would see vandalism.

And these cave systems are so unique.

A lot of people don't even realize how many wild caves there are in Indiana, but people don't realize that, you know, some of the creatures that are in this cave may only exist in that cave or in that watershed.

And if it's gone, it's gone forever.

And that's sort of what we want people to understand with the Indiana Karst Conservancy, is that you don't have to be a caver to appreciate caves and karst.

You just have to understand how important caves and karst are to the ecosystem and the areas that we have in Indiana and how special that is.

♪ >> What I love about being in a cave is the solitude of it.

When you go underground and you are in a group that's totally quiet, you turn off your lights after a little bit and you just hear the sounds of a cave, whether that's water dripping off of formations or a bat fluttering by.

And then when you turn on those lights, color seems brighter and more vivid.

As soon as you come out of the cave too, you have a greater appreciation for everything else around you.

That's probably what I love most about getting into caves.

>> I love it for the nature and also for the adventure of it, for the discovery.

I love finding new stuff, whether it's a 10-foot hole or a bigger system.

>> Well, I think it's just the sense of adventure and going where no man's ever gone before.

>> You know, I've been in caves that probably been less than 50 people, maybe less than a dozen people in some of these caves.

That's kind of the allure for me, keeps bringing me back.

>> What I love about caving is just the camaraderie of it.

You know that those people there are -- they're gonna have your back if you run into any kind of trouble, whether it be physical support, moral support, just the friends you make along the way is one of the best things about it.

>> You know, something to be said about taking your closest friends and hanging out for the day underground.

It's a great time.

>> It's something I could do, and that's very important.

>> It's kind of like if you are a long distance runner.

After you have done caving for a while, you get into this groove where you can do anything, and you feel just so high while you're doing it.

You could be in freezing conditions.

You could be soaking wet.

You are constantly going at it, and you come out and you're just exhausted, but it's a wonderful kind of exhaustion.

>> Caves will kick your butt!

That is the best exercise and workout that you can get.

>> You don't even feel like you are getting exercise maybe, until the next day.

Obviously, you feel it the next day.

>> You will have sore muscles where you didn't even know that you had muscles, not to mention the bruises.

>> I'm a photographer above ground.

So when I'm underground, I really love to focus on the insects that are in the caves, fish that are in the water, the salamanders that are eating their food, the cave crickets.

It's the liveliness that is underground is quite remarkable.

>> Getting to do something that most people don't, that's what I liked about it.

I had an old caving friend, when he would go caving, he'd call it a TLA, a true life adventure.

It's just kind of a natural high.

♪ >> Narrator: Indiana is home to four privately owned commercial caves.

The majority of these are located in the southeast corner of the state, in Harrison and Crawford Counties.

Travel north to Lawrence County, and venture a few miles outside of Bedford, and you'll find the one geographical outlier, Bluespring Caverns.

>> What's unique about this cave is it's probably the best example of an underground dendritic cave system.

Just like a system of drainage on the surface has many tributary streams, covers large areas, over 20 square miles, all passes through the cave.

It also has the northern-most population of the blind cave fish, the White River being the barrier.

There's none north of that.

>> A little bit of the cave was known, oh, back in the 1880s and '90s where people claimed they went two and three miles into the spring entrance, which is totally impossible.

They probably went 150 feet into the spring entrance.

[ Laughter ] But people exaggerate.

>> Narrator: A dam on the White River completed in 1913 closed the spring entrance and left the cave inaccessible for decades.

>> March of 1940, during a heavy rain, there was a collapse, and of course, the pond drained and that revealed an entrance.

>> The now empty pond was owned by dairy farmers George and Eva Colglazier, whose main interest in the rediscovered cave, was keeping their children out of it.

But word of the cave spread, and soon the Colglaziers had visitors.

>> In 1947, a fellow named Bob Frederick took a canoe in the cave and paddled upstream along our present tour route.

>> Narrator: In 1963, another group of curious cavers came knocking.

>> Our first trip into the cave, we were amazed by the amount of water that was flowing through, and at that time, only about two and a half miles of main river passage was explored and known.

The rest of it was a big mystery.

So that kind of piqued our interest.

>> Narrator: That's a bit of an understatement.

>> Over the next three years, essentially, we discovered and surveyed parts of what turned out to be 17 additional miles of new passages that we found.

>> Narrator: By the late 1960s, cavers from around the state were traveling to rural Lawrence County, each eager to explore.

George and Eva were just as happy to stay above ground.

>> They really didn't do any exploration themselves.

They just vicariously got to see all of our photos and hear the tales that we told them about the cave and what was going on down there.

>> Narrator: And read letters left in their guest book.

>> Narrator: In 1970, a local developer approached the Colglaziers with an offer to open the cave to the public.

>> Caves are something that unless you've got a lot of money, you need to really know what you're doing.

>> Narrator: This venture, known as Inner Odyssey, had neither the funds nor the know-how and closed after less than two seasons.

>> Then the cave was pretty much abandoned from 1972, essentially, all the way 'til we came in spring of 1974 to start our development.

>> The team, led by Jim Richards, Sam Frushour and Bob Housley had their work cut out for them.

>> I remember many a walk down into the entrance sinkhole, because there was a yellowjacket nest, and you usually got stung somewhere on the way in.

[ Laughter ] >> Narrator: And somehow, the yellowjackets were the least of their concerns.

>> Everything that they put in was pretty much washed away or destroyed by the time we arrived.

We started pretty much fresh.

There was actually a month of work taking out the remnants of what they had put there to clean things up and start anew.

♪ Essentially in the caves, you're looking for developing pathways that can be safe, as far as not having large overhangs, fall hazards, trip hazards, as few steps as possible, because steps are a problem, and something that takes you around something that's worth while seeing.

And in our cave, we're doing that once we get in the boats.

Almost everything is operated from the boats themselves.

♪ >> Narrator: In the fall of 2024, Bluespring Caverns celebrated their 50th anniversary.

>> I'm damn proud.

Mostly I'm very proud for Jim, who has been really a mover and a shaker when it comes to just the daily business.

>> It means a lot.

To me, probably, it's an official end to my full-time involvement in the caverns because even though I'm part-time nowadays, I do still spend 30 hours a week or so here doing this and that and whatever.

But it also is a time to bring together all the people that have contributed to our operation over the last 50 years, and that is probably hundreds of staff people, many of whom this was their first job, and who will tell you today that it's the best job they ever had right here at Bluespring Caverns.

♪ >> Louie Lamon owned a hardware store in the town of Corydon.

It was the only place locally that you could go to find caving supplies, hard hats and carbide lights, ropes and rope ladders and caving supplies that you needed, and Louie would always have tales to tell about caves.

Louie's wife would get on him for -- Louie, you need to wait on these people.

You know, and he was over in the corner talking to somebody about this cave or asking about, don't you have a cave out on your farm that I heard about?

You know, he was just inquisitive, and he was the local authority on caves.

♪ You know, no Internet or anything to go by in those days.

So Louie was the main contact to go caving in this part of Indiana.

A lot of people refer to Louie as the father of Indiana caving, the modern caving anyhow.

There was a handful -- there was Leo Schotter, Milltown, Indiana, was another one, but they were kind of the forerunners of current caving.

Like modern cavers, I think he was curious about what's inside that hole over there.

He'd have a twinkle in his eye, and he'd say, yeah, caves, I like to go in 'em.

And then he would pause, and he'd say, I like to come out of 'em too.

>> My first caving trip was 1958.

I was a Tenderfoot Scout, and we went to place called Cave River Valley, which is part of Spring Mill State Park now.

I think when you are 11 years old, even though you are going in a cave that somebody else has been in, to you, it's like nobody has ever been here before, and it's the sense of exploration and adventure.

After that, everything for me was caves.

>> Narrator: Less than a decade after his first caving experience, Gary Roberson, along with fellow members of the fledgling Indiana Speleological Survey began to explore Binkley Cave.

>> From '67 to '69, I don't know, we were probably in there 20, 25 times a year.

I went to school at Vanderbilt down in Tennessee.

So any weekend that I could, I rode the train home, since my dad worked for the railroad and it was free, and somebody would pick me up and we'd come out and cave all weekend.

I would get on the train, go back on Sunday night, and collapse and try to rest up.

>> Narrator: Originally discovered in the late 1920s and first mapped in the 1950s, Binkley is the largest cave system in Indiana.

Less than a year into their exploration, Gary and the other members of the ISS, came to a realization.

>> We can make a show cave out of this.

>> Narrator: But there wasn't a viable entrance, and soon, Binkley was on the back burner.

The following decades would see the development of Squire Boone Caverns and the purchase of Marengo Caves with Gary at the center of both.

But over time, my thoughts drifted back to, well, maybe we could develop part of this Binkley Cave.

>> In 2012, a workable entrance was discovered, nearly half a century after Gary and fellow ISS members first explored the Binkley cave system.

>> It turned out to be an unbelievably difficult project.

I mean, we did this with four to six people, and we had boats and thousands of tons of steel, and we had to blast a tunnel entrance.

In fact, we were still welding cables out at 2:00 in the morning before we opened.

>> Narrator: Indiana Caverns opened in June of 2013, after 380 days of development.

What Gary refers to as the longest year.

♪ Today, Indiana Caverns offers visitors a few ways to experience portions of the vast Binkley system.

>> If y'all are ready, we're going to start heading on this way.

This is our manmade entrance.

It goes about 30 feet deep underground right down that way.

>> Our family tour, it's an hour and 15 minute tour.

We take you into this first big room called Big Bone Mountain.

You got everything right there.

You have a huge room, a little over 80 feet tall, beautiful formations all throughout.

>> Once again, here on your alls left, we do have another formation.

That's when stalactite and a stalagmite meet, that is called a column.

>> All the bones.

There's sinkholes overhead.

A little bit of everything, just right there in that very first room.

You literally can't take a step through there without finding some cluster of bones, whether it's Ice Aged bison, flat-head peccaries, which is a pig-like animal from the Ice Age, bears, fisher, porcupine, vols.

I mean, they are everywhere in Big Bone Mountain.

>> And Big Bone Mountain is where all the animals would walk down or fall down, and most likely get stuck, which is why we find so many bones in here with us today.

>> But once you make it through that first big room, you get down to the river, take a little boat ride.

♪ >> There's not a lot of caves where you can both walk through, see all these bones, let alone take a boat ride through the cave too.

So it just makes it special.

>> Narrator: The family tour covers a few thousand feet.

The known length of the Binkley system, nearly 45 miles.

>> All right.

Here we go.

Come on this way.

>> Guests might ask, you know, where does that passage go?

I don't know.

You know, we're still -- we're still exploring.

We don't know where everything goes.

I think guests remember that too, the exploration.

>> Narrator: For guests looking to experience a bit of that exploration and discovery for themselves, there's Deep Darkness!

♪ >> That's our four-hour wild cave trip.

♪ >> When you hear wild cave trip, it just means there's no walkways, no lights, no modern day path improvements.

So you're gonna get wet.

You're gonna get muddy.

It's a 93-foot belay-assisted ladder just to get into the cave.

Once you are down that ladder, you are in this nice big room.

You are gonna climb down another steep mountain slope, just to get to the river at the bottom.

You're in the river the whole rest of the time.

But down in Deep Darkness, you have these big passageways that you are walking through.

You get to see parts of the cave that most of the public just doesn't get to see, let alone testing your physical limits on all the climbing, maybe squeezing through a little passage here and there.

It's a lot of fun for people, I think, just to be able to get down, see places you don't get to see very often, like real caving.

Just get wet and muddy and have a good time with your friends.

>> Narrator: A lot like Gary and the other members of the Indiana Speleological Survey first did more than 50 years ago.

♪ As for the chances of any show caves in Indiana.

>> Oh, I mean, I'm not one of a kind, but I'm one of a few, I guess.

So I don't know.

It's possible, but don't hold your breath.

You cannot go out and hire a contractor to develop a cave because it's just prohibitively expensive.

I expect we'll be the last really decent quality show cave opened by private people, unless some other cavers get the crazy notion like us sometime.

♪ >> Most all the mountains have been climbed.

It's a lot easier to go someplace in a cave here in southern Indiana and go someplace where nobody has ever been before, and that is really cool.

>> It's a very unique experience, and it's -- it's not for everyone.

You probably either love it or you hate it, but you can appreciate it, even if you don't want to do it.

>> If you haven't tried caving, get in touch with a local grotto.

We teach safe practices on how to explore a cave, and usually have events or cave trips set up to where a new caver could join on a trip, just to see what their interest level is.

>> If you go on a couple of cave trips and you like it, you're probably gonna be hooked, and you're gonna keep coming back.

It can get very addictive, and by that rewarding.

>> If you are not comfortable with the wild tours, which a lot of us aren't, I would say find a show cave, a guided tour, take your family, and just enjoy that experience.

>> I would definitely encourage anyone who has the ability to explore these caves in Indiana because it gives you an opportunity to see something totally different.

>> And you will see a vast variety of things because no cave is the same as the next cave.

>> It's just a totally unique experience that not a lot of people get to have, but it really rounds out your Indiana experience, given the volume of caves that we have here in the state.

They are a really underappreciated resource that people need to get into and explore responsibly.

>> I always encourage people to check out caves, not just for the sporting aspect of it, but just from a conservation aspect.

Everything you do on the surface has a major impact on the underground world, and I -- I think it's important that people have a better understanding of just what lies underneath of them.

♪ >> Support for "Journey Indiana Underground" is provided by: JL Waters, helping people fulfill adventures in the great outdoors with advice, gear and more.

JL Waters located on the square in downtown Bloomington.

Limestone Country, offering an outdoor playground of Southern Indiana tourism, with Bluespring Caverns, Spring Mill State Park and more, all explorers can experience outdoor adventures.

More at limestonecountry.com.

Sweet Owen County Convention and Visitors Bureau, providing information on local eateries, retail shops and one-stop trip planning to the various events and attractions in Owen County.

More at sweetowencvb.org.

And by members like you.

Thank you!