The same formations that ancient miners had scraped for gypsum were now described in flowery nineteenth-century prose as wonders of the natural world.

The same darkness that had framed three thousand years of underground labor was now framed as sublime and awe-inspiring.

What The Cave Is Now — And What It Continues To Yield

Mammoth Cave National Park manages a site that is simultaneously a world-class natural landmark, one of the most significant archaeological sites in North America, a living system where unique cave-adapted life exists in total darkness, and the resting place of an ancient miner whose people went farther underground than any other ancient people on Earth.

The cave continues to yield scientific information.