The physical evidence of the mining operation is detailed and consistent: this was not a single person improvising.

It was an organized and practiced activity, using specific tools selected for specific tasks, conducted by people who knew what they were doing and who had learned it from others who had done it before them.

The Ledge And The Boulder — What The 1935 Discovery Revealed

The discovery made by Cutliff and Campbell on June 7, 1935, was in some ways the most dramatic piece of individual evidence ever found for the ancient mining operation in Mammoth Cave.

The man the CCC workers found had been working on a high ledge — elevated above the cave floor, positioned in the way that miners working mineral-rich ceiling or upper-wall deposits would need to be.