New Publication Details |
New Publication Details |
| Educational Series 3: Caves of Maryland | contact: Jim Reger( jreger@mgs.md.gov ) |
|
CAVES OF MARYLAND by |
|
FORWARD TO THIS NEW EDITION Educational Series No. 3, Caves of Maryland, has always been one of Maryland Geological Survey’s most popular publications. Although E.S.3 has been out of print for a number of years it is often requested. This reissue is not an exact replica of the original publication, although the original information and illustrations have not been changed.
This edition was created by digitally scanning a clean, bound copy of the 1976 reprint of E.S.3. The scanned pages were processed with optical character recognition software and converted to Adobe Pagemaker format. The only changes made to the original text were corrected spelling, which was done by the software. Because we do not possess the original artwork for E.S.3, all the photographs and illustrations were reproduced from the scanned material. Unfortunately this process has caused a degradation in the quality of some of the photographs. This new reissue also does not exactly reproduce the original layout, but we have preserved the format as best as is digitally possible. We wish to thank Sarah Conkwright for her assistance in piecing together the layout of this reissue and for proofreading the final copy. Robert D. Conkwright |
|
FOREWORD Every once in awhile in caving circles I used to hear a caustic little joke which went like this:
Thus, a few merciless wags have from time to time besmirched the state of the speleological arts in Maryland. While it's perfectly true that Maryland is not exactly vying for underground prominence with, say, our neighbor the Commonwealth of Virginia, with its 2,000-plus caves, or Alabama, with over 1,000 caves catalogued, the Maryland cave picture is not quite what the wits occasionally imply. Cave studies here have come a long way since their inauspicious beginnings in the mid-18th Century, when Joseph Spangenberg made reference in Moravian Journals to a cave believed to have been the one now known as Busheys Cavern. This same cave, then called “Hughes’ Cave,” was one of two listed for Maryland in Dr. Louis Feuchtwanger's 1859 Treatise on Gems. A Maryland cave attained a considerable measure of scientific stature in the very early years of the 20th Century when the great American paleontologist, James William Gidley, began his extensive excavations in the Pleistocene deposits of the Bone Cave near Cumberland. It remains today one of the finest such fossil discoveries ever made. By 1943 the number of caves on the state list had leaped to five, as recorded by Robert Morgan in his “Partial Index to All the Known Caves of the World,” published in The American Caver, the Bulletin of the National Speleological Society. Two years later Martin Muma, who had previously written about archaeological artifacts in Sand Cave in the Natural History Society of Maryland's journal, Maryland, and about John Friend’s Cave, made the first attempt at a systematic state survey. Muma's descriptive list of 15 caves appeared in The American Caver in 1945. A quantum leap in Free State speleology was made in 1950
with the publication of Bill Davies’ The Caves of Maryland, Bulletin 7
of the Maryland Department of Geology, Mines and Water Resources. Davies'
survey, reprinted with an appendix in 1952, contained general comments
on cave science, and descriptions of some 54 caves as they were known
at that time. A decade later, members of the Baltimore Grotto (chapter)
of the National Speleological Society, responding to Our caves are part of the natural heritage of America. In recent years we have become more and more aware of their aesthetic and scientific values to mankind. They are ancient phenomena. They have their own unique geological and mineralogical formations, and are inhabited by remarkable living things adapted to their very special environments. The evolutionary processes which have produced caves and their marvels required a great investment of the world's time. Like any other aspect of our natural heritage, they should be treated with intelligence and responsibility. Unfortunately, though, as is the case with much of our environment we are both loving and vandalizing many of them to death. Man had developed the questionable ability to destroy many of the inexorable works of eons. And so, it must be uppermost in the minds of those who read this book and use its information for whatever purposes, that all who enter the underground are privileged visitors. That caves, if they are to survive as living museums, laboratories, nature preserves, challenges, or just plain curiosities, must be treated with all the respect due their fragile grandeur and inestimable value. John E. Cooper |
|
CONTENTS Introduction and acknowledgments References Index ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Cave location diagram TABLES 1. Rock shelters in Maryland containing archeological deposits |
Updated 11/11/1
Because
the information in this publication has not been edited for content since
1971, it should be considered a historical document only. Some of the
caves described here no doubt have been permanently closed or destroyed.
Property ownership has also changed in many instances. Geologic interpretations
have also undergone change. Therefore please treat this publication as
a historical document and do not rely on the information contained herein
as an accurate account of current conditions.
In
February, 1962, the following query, of questionable poetic virtue and
entitled “Ode to the Maryland Cave Survey,” appeared in the newsletter
of the Baltimore chapter of the National Speleological Society:
a
need for up-to-date information on local caves, organized the Maryland
Cave Survey. Several workers added considerably to our knowledge of the
state's underground before this initial Survey became inactive. Periodic
reports on their work appeared in publications of the National Speleological
Society, notably the Baltimore Grotto News. In late 1965, Dick Franz and
Dennis Slifer reactivated the Maryland Cave Survey, bringing to it both
the spelunker's zeal and the investigative depth required to make a first-rate
speleological study. Working with other members of the National Speleological
Society, most of them Marylanders, their efforts have culminated in this
extensive new book on the caves of Maryland.