More than a century ago, Horace Hovey wrote a “practical guidebook” for those wishing to explore Mammoth Cave.
Hovey’s Handbook of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky by Horace Carver Hovey | Project Gutenberg
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Wonder whether Hovey was the pirate, luring people to the cave.
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Been there many times. 
I highly recommend the Grand Avenue tour, but it is quite the hike. And I do mean hike - 4 miles through winding passages and up and down underground “hills” in cavern rooms big enough to park a 747 in.
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I just realized: the only time I went to Mammoth Cave was before Colossal Cave was written, on a childhood trip to visit one of Mom’s college friends. I think it was five or six years later when I first played it (as Apple Adventure), and it was some time after that I learned that it was about Mammoth Cave.
I did not encounter any knife-throwing dwarves.
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I’ve been there. It is a neat cave. The graffiti from the 1800s is intersting. Anyhow my family has a shared history with mammoth cave. My ancestors on my mothers side had land near mammoth cave and the US government claimed it when it became a national park. There is a book about the whole debacle. My whole family is from Ohio and before then they came from Kentucky.
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That’s awesome. I can’t seem to access the book but that might just be on my side, it’s crazy how relatively young IF is, but also quite old…
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Brilliant. I’ll check it out.
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I found that ebay has plenty of copies of this, including some first printings at reasonable-for-first-printing prices as well as cheaper more modern editions.
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