MAMMOTH CAVE NATIONAL PARK, Kentucky —  On a wintery January day, the refrigerator-sized maw leading into Sand Cave drips with icicles amid the hush of a snow-frothed young forest — a bucolic though inauspicious site in a national park that hosts the longest cave system in the world.

The locale betrays no hint of the gory tragedy that played out here beginning exactly 100 years ago today, a horrific drama that drew the nation’s attention for a full 18 days as the cave that fascinated a prominent adventurer, Floyd Collins, claimed his life. The tragedy would ultimately take on a larger role, key to the federal park designation of Mammoth Cave National Park.  

“Floyd Collins was one of the three big media stories of the day, along with World War I and the Lindbergh baby,” explained Molly Schroer, public affairs officer at Mammoth Cave.

It was on January 30, 1925, that Collins entered Sand Cave to explore its prospects as a visitor site and became trapped in a passageway not much wider than his chest, dislodging a 27-pound rock that pinned his leg. Despite massive rescue efforts by cavers, engineers, geologists and miners, the cave won out, and Collins was dead when they reached him in mid-February.

Commemorative Cvents

To commemorate the centennial year of this event, the park is offering special ranger-led history tours highlighting Collins’ life. A media preview tour led by Collins historians stopped  at the mouth of Sand Cave (the interior is considered unsafe and closed to all visitors) and his family’s Crystal Cave, which has been closed to the public for more than 60 years.

Floyd Collins/NPS archives

A Born Caver

Collins was born in 1887 and had a lifelong interest in caves and exploration. A daring adventurer, he was known to push himself beyond normal human endurance.  

When Collins came upon Sand Cave, he thought it possibly could be developed as a tourist attraction at a time when public and commercial interest in touring caves was growing in his home region.

On the day of his accident, he was 60 feet deep in Sand Cave.

The ensuing rescuers attempted amputating his leg, jacking up the rocks entrapping him, and excavating a rescue shaft down to his level.

Reporters from across the country descended on this Kentucky countryside to cover the news. It was a top story in the New York Times. Congress took breaks to listen to radio updates. Churches across the country held services to pray for him. The publicity drew an estimated 10,000 spectators to the cave opening on February 8, dubbed “Carnival Sunday” for the sensationalist atmosphere. Automobiles jammed the two-lane access road and vendors sold hamburgers.

The rescue team was racing against time. Rescuers reached Collins on February 16, his 18th day of being trapped, and found him dead from exposure, exhaustion, and starvation.

This national attention came at an opportune time. In the 1920s, most national parks were in the western United States and the eastern United States was the country's population center. The nascent National Park Service commissioned a study to identify some eastern park locations. While Mammoth Cave had been considered, the report ultimately recommended the Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah instead. When the park authorization bill, however, reached Congress in 1926, Collins’ fame had put it back on the list.

Exploration

The long, windy, and uneven road to the Collins’ homestead revealed Floyd’s motivation for exploring Sand Cave. In the early 1900s, cave tourism was a competitive and lucrative business. In what were known as the Kentucky Cave Wars, owners of show caves battled, sometimes aggressively, to lure the tourists that flowed into the region. Since Mammoth Cave was known for its immense dry passages, locals sought spectacular alternatives and opened more than 20 caves in the 1920s.

Floyd's ordeal drew widespread media attention/NPS archives

Collins had discovered a show cave on his family homestead in 1917. Crystal Cave was one of the most memorable in the region, with unique helictite formations and beautiful gypsum flowers. But visitation was low at Crystal Cave because of its off-the-beaten-path location. Sand Cave, on the other hand, was on the direct route to Mammoth Cave.

Cavernous Sights

A short downhill trail leads from the Collins family home to the Crystal Cave entrance. It is listed as a difficult cave walk with steep, slick sections with uneven icy stairs that are particularly tricky to navigate on slick winter days. Walking through the passageways revealed why it was named Crystal Cave; gypsum, which forms in drier caves, lined the walls and refracted headlamp lights on the media tour like snow crystals. The cavern was lined with artifacts from early visitors, like candy wrappers and signatures from the 1920s to 1950s.

Crystal Cave and Floyd Collins are forever linked. A century-old welcome, the words “Floyd Collins,” is engraved on a rock at the entrance. In one of the more open passageways, Ranger Jackie Wheet, a Collins historian, pointed to a flat rock. There, he explained, was where successive cave owners capitalized on Collins’ fame; after receiving permission to exhume his grave, they placed his coffin there as a draw for tourists. His body remained for decades, even after the cave was closed to the public, until he was finally laid to rest at the Mammoth Cave Baptist Church cemetery beside his family in 1989.

After the cave became part of the national park, the small home and ticket booth on the Collins homestead became a hub for cave exploration. It was the first headquarters of the Cave Research Foundation, a group that explores and maps the Mammoth Cave system. An historic expedition that departed from there in 1972 discovered that the Flint Ridge system (including Crystal Cave) was indeed connected to the Mammoth Cave system, cementing its spot as the longest cave in the world at 144.4 miles. Further explorations have expanded its known length, which as of January, 2025, reaches 426 miles.

Floyd Collins' headstone/Dave Kobersmith

Legacy

Mammoth Cave Baptist Church, a peaceful white clapboard chapel, serves as a reminder of the once thriving rural communities that used to call this place home. At Collins’ gravesite, visitors have placed coin and rock offerings on his headstone. “The greatest cave explorer ever known,” it reads. Hyperbolic? According to Wheet, the spirit of Floyd Collins lives on, both at the national park and in the cultural imagination and he surely is one  of the best-known cavers ever.

Since Collins’ tragic end, his life has been recalled in numerous books and a documentary. A ballad from 1926, “The Death of Floyd Collins,” was the first record to sell more than 2 million copies. The “Floyd Collins” musical will run at the Lincoln Center Theater this year to commemorate the 100^th anniversary. His tale is one of the central human stories Mammoth Cave shares through programs and displays, and the park rangers assured us that they invited him into the cave with us, a tradition for ensuring a successful adventure. There is even a Simpson episode that references his plight.

Why has the story and spirit of Collins endured so vividly over a full century?

“People are fascinated by the human element and empathize with his dire situation,” Wheet said. “Then they learn about his life before he was trapped, the curiosity and zeal with which he explored the unknown. His story grabbed the attention of the world.”

By all indications on this 100^th anniversary, it hasn’t let go. 

All tickets for the 100^th anniversary Floyd Collins history tours were already distributed through a lottery. The park is hosting a special program on February 22 that is open to the public. Guests will include history experts and descendants of Floyd Collins.