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Early Days
of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Grotto
By: Pete Lindsley NSS-5566F
Believe it or not, the Dallas-Ft. Worth Grotto has been around longer than I have been caving, which has
been since 1960. Prior to the D-FW Grotto,
there was the Dallas Grotto. The Dallas
Grotto was a short-lived chapter of the
National Speleological Society (NSS) that
was born and died in the late 1950's. Bob
Littlefield was one of the original Dallas
Grotto survivors that helped establish the
new Dallas-Ft. Worth Grotto along with
Chuck Larsen, George Yeary, Jack J. Burch
and numerous others. Even back in the
early 1960's there was a strong Ft. Worth
group of cavers, but not quite enough to
outnumber the Dallas cavers. The meeting
location was in the mid-cities area at the
Arlington Lone Star Gas Co. Later the
meeting was changed to the University of
Dallas in Irving, and still later it was
moved to a library in North Irving.
Finally it moved to Dallas, as far west as
we could find a location just to make it
easier for the Fort Worth cavers. Rey
Perkins provided a meeting room in his
office area near the entrance to Love
Field and then later we moved to the
current Recreational Equipment Co.
building near Midway and LBJ Freeway.
I had been caving perhaps 6-8 months before
I heard of the NSS and the local Grotto.
The only lead I had was that one of the
leaders, Chuck Larsen, worked at Texas
Instruments in Dallas. There were about
four TI sites in Dallas at that time, and
none of them had a "Chuck". I finally
located a number for a Charles V. Larsen
and made the first contact with the
Grotto. The first meeting was wild. All I
wanted to do was to find out where some
good caves were located. At the meeting,
there were 4-6 small groups of people all
talking at once about caves, but they
didn't have much time to talk to me. They
were very obscure about cave locations.
The meeting was freestyle and I didn't
understand much about some of the cave
details that were discussed. (It hasn't
changed much 45 years later, I guess.)
Some of the first neat caves I heard about from
the Grotto were located out of state. Fitton Cave was in the Ozarks, Cottonwood
Cave and Crystal Cave were in Oklahoma, Bustamante was in Mexico, and in Texas was
Cave-Without-A-Name. Later I learned that there was an even larger Cottonwood Cave
in the New Mexico Guadalupe Mountains. We looked for many caves listed in the
NSS Bulletin 10 on Texas Caves, but since the 1948 publishing date
many of the caves had been closed because of certain large school grottos that had
not followed good landowner relations. We found that since the D-FW Grotto was
composed of mostly working people and professionals and not closely related to a
university, we could usually talk the landowner into giving our group a second
chance on some of the "closed caves." Other caves took several visits to the
landowner before they began to trust us enough to allow cave entry.
One
of the good sources of cavers for the D-FW
Grotto was Blair Pittman's Explorer Scout
group in Ft. Worth. The Ft. Worth cavers
were mostly scouts and all had good
camping and hiking skills, necessary for
our low-budget style of caving trips. One
of the first big D-FW Grotto projects was
just out of Menard in central Texas. We
got a good lead on a "Jack Pit Mine" and
an associated limestone cave and headed
out to find it. The land was up for sale
and the cave was reported to be quite
extensive. The problem was that the new
owner wanted to bulldoze the cave shut to
keep out some "silver miners" who were
working the nearby "Egg Shaped Sink" which
was reported to connect to Jim Bowie's
lost silver mine. We were cautioned by the
neighbors of the ranch with the cave that
we should be careful not to mess up the
sale of the property by asking to go in
the cave. The cave was at that time leased
to some people that were growing mushrooms
in the cave, but their lease was running
out in a few days and then the land would
be sold.
We
talked with a local kid that claimed to
know the cave because his uncle was one of
the mushroom miners. He agreed to take us
in the cave and show us "miles of
passage". He, too, cautioned us about
being seen at the cave, so we made our
first visit at night! He showed us the
water passage, told stories of it going
miles downstream and connecting with a
well at the Neal Ranch, and then took us
on a wild jaunt for over a mile in the
"Crevice Passage". He repeated some of the
stories from his uncle that told of the
Mexican burros going through the cave to
Jim Bowie's silver mine. The crevice was
headed towards the Egg Shaped Sink! Our
challenge was to find a location for a new
entrance that was not under the land that
was being sold so that we could get back
into the cave after the entrance was
bulldozed.
Blair
Pittman worked at the Ft. Worth Star
Telegram and had access to a WATS line. He
began to call the new owner to obtain
permission to enter the cave. Finally
after over a month of long distance phone
calls to the owner in San Angelo, he
finally agreed to let the D-FW Grotto
visit the cave for two days (only!). The
agreement, however, had one string
attached. We couldn't ask to visit the
cave again and we had to please quit
calling! What could we do? We needed some
more help, BIG TIME. The Grotto decided to
bring in the Texas Region by extending an
invitation to all the Grottos in Texas.
The UT Grotto in Austin and the Abilene
Grotto were the best sources of cavers,
but we had people from all over the state.
We set up the trip on a 3-day Labor Day
weekend and made arrangements to go in to
the property at noon Saturday, and leave
at noon Monday. Exactly 48 hours or "two
days". We ran phone lines in the cave,
started survey parties out at several
simultaneous points, and kept the
operation going around the clock. We had a
tent set up as headquarters with the
topside phone and drafting table. We drew
up the map on the spot using slide rules
and drafting machines for plotting. Thus
was born Project 48 at
Powell's Cave, soon to become the longest
cave in the state. The owner and his
family visited the expedition near the end
of the 2nd day and was very impressed with
our organization and all the work being
done. He also noted that we were NOT
digging for silver. We sent the new owner
copies of our maps when we had drawn them
up. We kept our promise to not call him
back for almost two years. Then we heard
that he was very disappointed we had not
come back to continue the work; in
addition he had not bulldozed the
entrance. The Grotto quickly organized
another state-wide expedition at Powell's
Cave and we had a 3-day repeat of the
first expedition. Several more expeditions
were also organized by the Grotto before
we finally ran out of cavers willing to
crawl to the outer reaches of Powell's
Cave. It would be a couple of decades
before the next crop of cavers would want
to go back to the cave.
Various
other projects were managed by the D-FW
Grotto in the "NATO" area which included
New Mexico, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma.
Early survey work was done at Gorman Cave
and Cave-Without-A-Name in Texas. We did
some early diving on the siphon at the
back of German and in Bad Air Hole. We
organized several county-wide TSA Projects
jointly with the Abilene Grotto, and we
even took over the editorship of the Texas
Caver for a couple of years when Jim Estes
finally gave up the editorship. In those
days we had to use paper masters for the
offset printing, had to do our own
halftones using borrowed equipment, and
made it a monthly Grotto project to
collate and mail the Texas
Caver. The publication quality was
much better than the previous mimeographed
quality of the typical 1950's caving
publications. The typing on a single
electric typewriter was alternated between
Katherine Goodbar and Jacklyn Robinson. We
lost our first printer because we found
out later he was thrown in jail for
counterfeiting gift certificates on the
side!
A favorite cave was Fitton Cave in the
Arkansas Ozarks. We discovered that the
cave ran under the property of Leslie and
Louise Huchingson, good friends of the
Johnsons of Ft. Worth who were Grotto
members. The cave was protected by a
strong gate controlled by Jim
Schermerhorn. We made a deal with Jim for
cave access; the Grotto would provide the
manpower for keeping the gate installed
and Jim would check us out a key and
provide the Portland cement and Buffalo
River gravel for rebuilding the gate. The
cave vandals were quite busy in the 1960's
and the Grotto had to make numerous trips
to Fitton to put the gate back on the
cave.Today there is a first class gate on
the entrance and since the cave was
purchased as part of the Buffalo National
River, management of the cave is provided
by the National Park Service.
We were also disappointed with the amount of vandalization in the cave. It had become
the custom in the 1950-60's for cavers to write their name on the wall and place a
mark beside it for each trip into the cave. One time after a 3-day camp in the
T-Room as we were leaving the cave, seven of us decided to "erase" the names. We
smeared clay over ALL the names in one location and gave a friendly "goodbye"
wave to the other cavers entering the cave that last day. The Missouri cavers
couldn't find their names on the wall and got really mad at the Grotto for a number
of years, but they quit writing their names! They got even by telling about all
the cans we left at our in-cave campsite in their Grotto newsletter. They were
correct in that we left some cans at the camp; they just failed to mention that
they were RUSTY cans that were just too much for us to carry out with all the
trash we DID carry out.
Several of the old-timers are still around; others have passed on, but we still remember them
all. If you have been a member or a visitor or associated with the Dallas Ft.
Worth Grotto in the past we would like to hear from you. We have a 50th anniversary
coming up in a few years and would like to add you to our mailing list. The white
elephant gift at the annual Christmas Party is a custom started over 45 years
ago! Perhaps we can post some of the pictures of past Christmas parties on
future web pages on this site. We also plan to post pictures of selected D-FWG
caving areas on these pages as we continue to update the web site. Please contact
Pete Lindsley or Mike Pearson if you wish to send us photos
for the web site or add your name to our mailing list.
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