This week we head to Virginia to visit Luray Caverns, the most highly decorated caverns in the world according to the Smithsonian. In this episode, we hear from three professionals who share the history of the caverns, the science behind the decorating formations, and how The Great Stalacpipe Organ creates music.
Phantom Chasers
Luray Caverns was discovered on August 13th, 1878 by three local men: Andrew J. Campbell (a local tinsmith), William Campbell, and local photographer Benton Stebbins. These fellows were prospecting for a show cave as they knew of a cave in southern Virginia that was open and giving tours. If they could find a cave, they too could make some money.
They spent a whole summer looking at every sinkhole on every farmer's land, all around town. The townspeople thought they were crazy, calling them “Phantom Chasers”. Eventually, the group came across one particular sinkhole. When they put their hands down, they felt cool air coming out of a quarter-size hole in the ground. They enlarged the hole enough for one man, Andrew Campbell, to slide down on a rope with a candle in hand. They discovered what they were looking for, one of the largest caverns in the world.
The Science of Cavern Decor
Cavern formations are created when water on the surface infiltrates into the ground. It picks up minerals that are in the soil and rock as it seeps into the earth.
Eventually, it enters the cavern system through microscopic pores in the rock. As the water drips and flows in, it deposits those minerals along the ceilings, walls, and floors. And over many, many years those minerals build up and reconstitute into these larger formations.
On average, scientists estimate that formations at Luray take around 120 years to grow one cubic inch. The largest formation in the cavern system is 40 feet tall, 120 feet in circumference at the base, and is an estimated seven and a half million years old. It’s called the Giant Redwood Tree as it resembles the trunk of a giant Sequoia.
The Great Stalacpipe Organ
Mr. Leland Sprinkles brought his son to Luray Caverns for his fifth birthday. At the time, tour guides would play a tune on the stalactites and stalagmites by striking them with a mallet. This gave Mr. Sprinkles, an engineer and organist, the idea to create a playable organ using the cave’s formations. With an agreement over a handshake, Sprinkles began developing the organ.
He would scout for tones by striking the formations and pick those that were closest. Then he would tune them to concert pitch by sanding them down. It was first played in 1957 and is still in use today. It covers three and a half acres, making it the world’s largest natural musical instrument!
This week we head to Virginia to visit Luray Caverns, the most highly decorated caverns in the world according to the Smithsonian. In this episode, we hear from three professionals who share the history of the caverns, the science behind the decorating formations, and how The Great Stalacpipe Organ creates music.
Phantom Chasers
Luray Caverns was discovered on August 13th, 1878 by three local men: Andrew J. Campbell (a local tinsmith), William Campbell, and local photographer Benton Stebbins. These fellows were prospecting for a show cave as they knew of a cave in southern Virginia that was open and giving tours. If they could find a cave, they too could make some money.
They spent a whole summer looking at every sinkhole on every farmer's land, all around town. The townspeople thought they were crazy, calling them “Phantom Chasers”. Eventually, the group came across one particular sinkhole. When they put their hands down, they felt cool air coming out of a quarter-size hole in the ground. They enlarged the hole enough for one man, Andrew Campbell, to slide down on a rope with a candle in hand. They discovered what they were looking for, one of the largest caverns in the world.
The Science of Cavern Decor
Cavern formations are created when water on the surface infiltrates into the ground. It picks up minerals that are in the soil and rock as it seeps into the earth.
Eventually, it enters the cavern system through microscopic pores in the rock. As the water drips and flows in, it deposits those minerals along the ceilings, walls, and floors. And over many, many years those minerals build up and reconstitute into these larger formations.
On average, scientists estimate that formations at Luray take around 120 years to grow one cubic inch. The largest formation in the cavern system is 40 feet tall, 120 feet in circumference at the base, and is an estimated seven and a half million years old. It’s called the Giant Redwood Tree as it resembles the trunk of a giant Sequoia.
The Great Stalacpipe Organ
Mr. Leland Sprinkles brought his son to Luray Caverns for his fifth birthday. At the time, tour guides would play a tune on the stalactites and stalagmites by striking them with a mallet. This gave Mr. Sprinkles, an engineer and organist, the idea to create a playable organ using the cave’s formations. With an agreement over a handshake, Sprinkles began developing the organ.
He would scout for tones by striking the formations and pick those that were closest. Then he would tune them to concert pitch by sanding them down. It was first played in 1957 and is still in use today. It covers three and a half acres, making it the world’s largest natural musical instrument!
Curator's Choice - A podcast for history nerds and museum lovers
Speaker 2:
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Curator's Choice. You might have noticed that the intro music is a little different this time around, and it's because that is the sound of the great stalag pipe organ in Leray Caverns playing Fiora Lise. Obviously, that's going to come up later on our episode today and we're at Leray Caverns. Leray Caverns is in Virginia and it is one of the most decorated cave systems in the world, or at least according to the Smithsonian and we're going to be exploring not only Leray Caverns but they have a lot of other tourist stops in the area. So they have the Shenandoah Heritage Valley Museum, they have the Car and Carriage Museum, they have a little toy museum where you walk through and can see old toys of the day. So there is a lot going on and we're just going to start with Leray Caverns and in the next few episodes we'll be covering those other amazing museums.
Speaker 2:
Another reason why today's episode is special is I'm interviewing three people at once. I was a little intimidated, but I think the chemistry was awesome and they were such a fun group. I'm sure you're going to enjoy this episode. First you're going to hear from Bill Huffman, who is the Director of Marketing and Public Relations. Then we'll be speaking with Tara Jewel, senior Sales Representative, a former tour guide, and then Larry Moyer, who is the great stalag pipe organ engineer. If you'd like to see pictures of today's episode, please go to Curator's ChoicePodcastcom, or you can check us out on Facebook and Instagram. Alright, let's get started.
Speaker 3:
I have worked at Leray Caverns. I'm in my 19th year and that's not counting high school and college.
Speaker 2:
Oh, so you're a true Leray nerd.
Speaker 3:
We all are. It's such a great company to work for and a great place and people come and stay and they never leave. They never really.
Speaker 2:
That's fantastic, especially after 19 years, and you still love it. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 3:
It is very cool and it's a great place to work. It's so much fun to see families come and connect and enjoy nature and really create memories that last a lifetime, and that's what it's all about for me.
Speaker 2:
Leray Caverns was actually the first caves that I've ever been to. So I'm from Nevada and we have hot springs and desert and coming out here getting to see all the greenery and everything's been great. Then they brought me to Leray Caverns because they were like oh so you're on the East Coast now, which means you have to go to Leray. It's like one of the top three things that every person who lives on the.
Speaker 2:
East ID United States does that's true? That's what we did, and I was just so excited because it's so cool down there and you guys have built it up pretty great up here. But Leray has a pretty interesting history outside of just being a maiden caverns as well.
Speaker 3:
Sure, sure, the town of Leray, or just Leray. How old are Leray caverns, oh so.
Speaker 2:
I don't know much about the town of Leray. To be honest, I'm assuming it's here because of the caverns. This was a little while ago, so I can't be held too accountable for my poor memory. But I do know that Leray Caverns itself has an old history with, I mean back to the 1800s.
Speaker 3:
Sure Leray Caverns was discovered on August 13th 1878 by three local men Benton Steppins, andrew Campbell and William Campbell and they were actually looking for a caverns. They knew of a cave in South Virginia that was open and giving tours and they thought, wow, if we could find a cave we could make some money. We could make some money ourselves. So they spent a whole summer looking at every sinkhole on every farmer's land all around town.
Speaker 2:
This was not a chance discovery.
Speaker 3:
It was not a chance discovery. They were actually prospecting for a cave, if you can believe it or not, and they spent all summer, hot summer, looking at all the farmland, and they'd actually checked this hill out once before and they thought, well, we'll do it one more time. So the townspeople thought they were crazy. They called them Phantom Chasers. But they did come and did see a little sinkhole and they put their hand down and felt a little cool air coming out of about a quarter size hole in the ground and they thought this is unusual for a hot August day. So they enlarged the hole they dug. Finally they had it big enough for one man to slide down. That was Andrew Campbell, on a rope and with a candle. They actually discovered what they were looking for one of the largest caverns in the world and the largest caverns on the East Coast, and it is a stunningly beautiful cavern.
Speaker 2:
And it was found because it was opening the size of a quarter.
Speaker 3:
Size of a quarter.
Speaker 2:
I mean that's crazy, that's incredible. They were actually able to find that anyways.
Speaker 3:
It is incredible, after looking and actually finding what they were looking for. It's amazing.
Speaker 2:
Were they brothers or were they just close friends?
Speaker 3:
They were friends. I think Andrew Campbell and William Campbell were related, but they weren't brothers. They were cousins, I believe. Yeah, they were cousins.
Speaker 2:
And so they succeeded in this fool's errand of finding this caverns, and then I'm assuming they tried to turn it into an amazing cash crop, because that's exactly what I would do.
Speaker 3:
They certainly did. On November 6th that same year they had built a little structure and started giving tours and that was the first illumination of the caverns and they did start giving tours immediately. So we've been giving tours every day since, except for COVID stopped us for a few months, but we had been giving. We'd been open consecutively over 50,000 days until then.
Speaker 2:
I think we can just in the future, we'll just cut COVID out of the entire equation yeah, let's just pretend like that doesn't happen Exactly. You can still hold that title to continuously open.
Speaker 3:
I feel like but the history of the caverns is kind of fascinating because the man who owned this land, sam Brubaker, had a lot of debts and so the land went up for auction. So the discoverers actually bought it at this auction and they didn't reveal that they had found the cave. So this went to court and the court battle raged for years on the proper ownership of the land and finally it went all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court where it was decided that the discoverers lost, so they didn't really get the benefits of their reward. It took a couple years for them for the court case to go through. So they did lose the caverns property and it went to Mr Brubaker's creditor, which was actually his brother-in-law, and his brother-in-law sold the land to the LaRae Cave and Railroad Company, which is actually a subsidiary of the railroad of Norfolk Southern, so the railroad owned it.
Speaker 2:
They built a little shack and they were doing some tours and then the battle, the legal battle, started happening, and so they I mean, they didn't really hardly make any money off of their discovery at all and they lost the property that they had technically bought.
Speaker 3:
That's correct.
Speaker 2:
Man that sucks.
Speaker 3:
That totally sucks Dang.
Speaker 2:
So and this is probably like outside the scope of this, but I'm just personally curious how were they able to lose the land? Was it just because they weren't honest about why they had bought it?
Speaker 3:
Exactly, and there was a hidden value of the land that they didn't report, and so that's was, and that's how they lost it. That's how they lost it.
Speaker 2:
Oh man, what a shame, yeah, bummer for them.
Speaker 3:
It really sucks for them.
Speaker 2:
And why didn't the original landowner keep it? You said it went to his benefit.
Speaker 3:
He was in financial difficulties and had a lot of debts and the land went up for auction to kind of pay for his debts, and that's when the discoverers bought it. And, of course, finally, when it went through the court system, it kicked back to whoever held the lien for Mr Brubaker's property, which was his brother-in-law.
Speaker 2:
So now the railroad has it.
Speaker 3:
The railroad has it.
Speaker 2:
What did the railroad do?
Speaker 3:
with it. They built a big hotel in Loray and they would. People would come on excursion trips. They would get off at the train station, take a wagon out here and tour the caverns. I mean that's people were hearty back then. They would come in their full woolen clothes and have a little torch and it was, you know, not the paved pathways we have today. There were more gravel, rough, a little walkways and they would come and tour. I mean, it was a big discovery. People knew about it. It was in the New York Herald, it was all over the place that these beautiful caverns had been found in Virginia.
Speaker 2:
I was griping about having to drive down that curvy mess that's next door. I can't imagine having to trek in a covered wagon, no doubt. Maybe I should just stop complaining so much. So I think it was almost a missed opportunity, although it's probably a good thing that they didn't do it. But the railroad, they should have put a little cart in a little railroad cart ride, I feel like.
Speaker 2:
I mean, that just seems to me an obvious move, but it's probably good that they didn't, so they didn't damage the structures that are in there now, Exactly. So, how long was the railroad in charge of it? The railroad was done.
Speaker 3:
Let's see, the railroad was in charge for about two or three years, I believe not too long and then it went, had various owners. It was sold to a land track kind of investment group and there was a local owner and then TC Northcott out of Elmira, new York rented the land here in 1901. And then Mr Northcott finally purchased it in 1905 for $60,000.
Speaker 2:
And is that what made the railroad look the way that it is today?
Speaker 3:
Exactly, mr Northcott really started the process of kind of making the tour pass, and the tour path has changed over time. So there used to be a lot of steps in the caverns. People would go in really tight places. All that has kind of changed today and we have a kind of a more modern figure eight pathway. You don't retrace your steps, there are no steps in the caverns In 2019, we eliminated the steps for the entrance and we have a brand new, lovely entrance.
Speaker 2:
So anyone can make it down into the caverns if you would like to.
Speaker 3:
You certainly can, so it has opened it up to a lot more people now.
Speaker 2:
I'm assuming, back before they kind of had the more figure eight structure of going through. You probably had a lot of people going places. They might not belong and I'm wondering did a lot of people kind of try to break off and steal some of the pieces?
Speaker 3:
Well, at the very end of the tour the tour used to end kind of, you know, about a mile into the caverns where it is now, and that section was enlarged in the 50s, I believe, to kind of give a little bit, have a better pathway out. But that place you can kind of see where people would break off the lag tides. They just didn't have the idea of preservation that we do today. So it's unfortunate, but that's just the way it was.
Speaker 2:
Definitely so. I think that a lot of people might kind of know oh, you know, it's a cave, what's in a cave? But what makes Lorraine so special?
Speaker 3:
To me, Lorraine is very special. Lorraine Caverns is so special because of the beautiful decoration of the caverns. It is one of the most highly decorated caverns in the world and the Smithsonian Institute even said that. So that is the Smithsonian institutions that that it is the most highly decorated caverns.
Speaker 2:
So it's not. It's not decorated because you guys have ribbons everywhere.
Speaker 3:
No, it's decorated with stalactites and stalagmites.
Speaker 2:
So can you tell us a little bit about those, how they form and, I think, really put into people's brains? They take forever to be created.
Speaker 3:
They do take a long time. I'll let my colleague, Tara, explain that one.
Speaker 2:
Perfectly Okay, so we'll pass it over In school, how I always remembered it was the right the stalagmites, the M is the mountains, because they're growing up from the bottom up, like how the mountains look. That's how I always remembered stalagmites versus stalactites hanging down.
Speaker 4:
See, we always say stalactites hang tight to the ceiling and stalagmites might grow up to reach the ceiling. I have not heard that one.
Speaker 2:
Well, and we?
Speaker 4:
have like a joke in the caverns that we do I always did it on my tours when I explain the difference between them and we have when they grow together, or you know, stalactite reaches the ground, stalagmite reaches the top. They're called a column or pillar. I always call them columns instead of pillars because if you're like me from around here in Page County, pillars would just sleep one at night time. People love that one.
Speaker 2:
That works out perfectly. So what does make Lurie Caverns so special in the terms of your pillars?
Speaker 4:
So all of our formations. As Bill had said, there it's very heavily decorated with all these formations and the formations are all formed whenever there's water up on the surface like precipitation, the water gets absorbed into the ground, it picks up minerals that are in the soil and it continues to seep down lower into the earth. Eventually it enters into the cavern system through microscopic pores in the rock and as the water drips and flows in, it deposits those minerals along the ceilings, walls and floors and over many, many years of this those minerals will build up and reconstitute into these larger formations. But of course that takes a long time to grow. On average, scientists estimate that most of our formations would take around 120 years to grow one cubic inch.
Speaker 2:
Oh man, and doesn't that just break your soul when you imagine people just tearing off like 500 years worth of a tiny piece.
Speaker 4:
It's incredible. I mean absolutely. You don't realize it. You know, the really cool thing I think about the caverns is that it makes you feel so small. You know, when you're standing in the caverns, you're in the middle of something that's hundreds of millions of years old and you know, even just the tiniest little bit of growth is probably significantly older than we'll ever live to be. And you know, it's amazing. You wouldn't really think that until you actually just stand there and take it all in.
Speaker 2:
And it's really cool. So when it's coming down and you're creating these stalagmites and stalactites, it obviously has to have a space to do that, like the opening of the inside of the caverns. What originally created that opening?
Speaker 4:
Oh, good question. It's really interesting stuff. So back during the Ordovacian period, this is 400, 450 million years ago, the sea levels were much higher. So this, actually this whole valley here, was covered in water. It was all a large inland sea kind of. So the animals that lived in that water would eventually die. Their bodies would sink down to the bottom and over many years, with time and pressure, bones and skeletons compact and create sedimentary rock. So this formed a huge block of stone that ran all along the sea floor and so after that, you know, the sea levels lowered. The earth was entering ice ages, so the sea levels lowered.
Speaker 4:
Then we have this whole area was cleared out. More land could form over top of that stone and that all became underground stone. So this left sedimentary rock. It's actually today called Beak Mentown Dolomite because it runs all the way from Beek Mentown, new York, all down the east coast down towards Florida. So it's really interesting because a lot of caverns there are, solutional caverns in this area are actually parts of that same strip of Dolomite, hollowed out in different sections to create different systems. And what causes the hollowing out process is it's really what makes it a solutional caverns is that water in the ground, combines with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in the soil, forming carbonic acid, and as that moves and shifts below the surface, it hollows away the openings of the caverns by eating away weakest rock.
Speaker 2:
That's cool and the weakest rock is eventually gone, and then, what creates this big cavern with these amazing features inside? Exactly these decorations that are not actual.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, it leaves all that room for the secondary growth. That's fantastic.
Speaker 2:
So you guys have. Obviously it's just filled in there with all different kinds of formations, but can you tell us a little bit more? I mean, you spoke about the columns that form when they meet, but I know that there's different specific ones that you guys have that you highlight on the tours.
Speaker 4:
Right. So the first major formation that you see when you enter the caverns is the Washington column. Andrew Campbell himself named it the Washington column in honor of this nation's first president, george Washington. As you go deeper into the caverns you see some really significant formations. The largest formation in the cavern system is 40 feet tall, 120 feet around the base and circumference and there's an estimated 7.5 million years old and we call that our giant redwood tree because it resembles the trunk of a giant redwood or sequoia. We also have another really incredible formation called Saracen's Tent.
Speaker 4:
It's personally one of my personal favorites in the caverns. It is drapery formation. Drapery's a little different than stalactites. They still come down from the ceilings but stalactites form where ceilings are pretty level so the water can come in and drip straight down. So it forms, you know, that conical shape of a stalactite. When you have a ceiling that's tilted or slanted on an incline, the water comes through the pores but doesn't drip straight down. It's held to the ceiling by surface tension and it trickles down along the ceiling and it deposits those minerals it's carrying into a long, thin line. So every year they form down into a sheet like formation and those are a little thinner than the stalactites, but they do. They look like draperies hanging up and they're just really beautiful formations, and Saracen's Tent is considered to be one of the best examples of a drapery in the world, so it's a very cool formation.
Speaker 2:
And it's here at La Rae, just saying Another fantastic reason why La Rae is great. So you're talking about these different kinds of formations. I know that when I visited the last time, they looked like they were different colors. Yes, is that just because it's different minerals that are being seeped down?
Speaker 4:
Exactly the colorations that you're seeing down there are all natural except for one. All of the different colors are caused by different chemical compounds in those minerals that are being carried in. So the most common color you'll see down there is anywhere from a tan to orange, yellow, red or brown. That's all caused by iron oxide. Then you have grays, blues and blacks, which are manganese oxide, and then you have that striking bright white that you see sometimes, and that's calcium carbonate or calcite. The only color that's unnatural in the caverns is green, and that's because it's moss and algae caused by the artificial lighting.
Speaker 2:
Oh, so it wasn't there before, but now that it's been lit up ever since the railroad company put that electricity in. Exactly so is the moss growing? Is it just growing on the outside of it? And it's kind of giving you that sheen.
Speaker 4:
Exactly and there's some spots in that, and Mr Moore here would actually tell you that there is some cave maintenance done in slowing down and getting rid of the moss and algae growth so that you can see the natural coloration of the stone.
Speaker 2:
Very cool. So last time I was here again as well, someone was telling me that you guys used to hold big dancing events in one of the larger cavern spaces.
Speaker 4:
Right, what was that? That is my favorite room in the entire caverns the cathedral. The cathedral is also called the ballroom or wedding room, because we did use to hold ball-like dances and festivities there, and to this day we still hold weddings. We've had well over 500 weddings take place in the caverns so far over the years. The vast majority of them are in that room. The cathedral is one of the deeper parts of the caverns tour, and it's also home to the Great Stilak Pipe Organ, which is the world's largest natural musical instrument and the only one of its kind.
Speaker 2:
Oh, that's really cool. So it's the most decorated caverns. How big is? I mean? I'm assuming you know, when you go on the tour you only get to see a portion of what there actually is down there.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, the whole caverns is 64 acres, so it's definitely really large. From the pathway you do get to see over about 48 acres, so you do actually get to see the vast majority of the caverns. And most of the areas that are off of the pathway are just, you know, they're very inaccessible or additional damage would have to be done to actually put a pathway through those areas. But I will say I have seen quite a few of the areas that are off the tour route and the best of the best is on the tour. It's on display you can see it yes absolutely.
Speaker 2:
That's really cool, that's fantastic. Well, so do you want to hear a little bit about?
Speaker 4:
that.
Speaker 2:
I did want to ask about the egg. Oh yeah, the stalagmite egg.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, so the two fried eggs. They're actually a pretty notable formation to a lot of people who come here. You know years and years before and they were like I was here when I was a kid. They always ask about the fried eggs and they're still here. And the fried eggs actually formed because they were two stalagmites that were just next to a ramp that was being constructed and they were just like any other stalagmite in the caverns. But the construction workers who were actually putting in that ramp cut those formations with heavy equipment and then actually left the bases broken open and it exposed the crystal inside of them.
Speaker 4:
All of our formations here. They grow a dense crystal in them and it's really amazing. But the center of these they looked like yellowish and then they had white rings of calcite around them and they really did give off the look of two fried eggs. People used to be allowed to rub them for good luck, but the oil in our skin does discolor the rock as well. As you know, it can stop any future growth. But those formations are considered dead formations because of everyone rubbing them for good luck, no matter how much water drips on them or anything. They could never grow more. But because of all that, you can also see that the fried eggs no longer really have a yellow yolk. They're a little more grayish, so a lot of people say they look like oysters on a half shell now.
Speaker 2:
Oh man, this side of the country with y'all's oysters.
Speaker 4:
It is a force to behold.
Speaker 2:
I've never had an oyster until I came out here. I'm not on the oyster train. I'm not a fan Validation. All right, this is good.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, so the wishing well is towards the end of our tour as well. It's right before the fried eggs. The wishing well is the deepest body of water in the caverns it's six feet deep. It has a really interesting turquoise coloration and that's caused by the copper from pennies that were tossed in over the years of gradually staying the rock that color. Every year we actually do drain the well, pull out all of the coins and put them into a savings account in the bank and then, once we've saved up a really large, respectable amount, we donate it to different charities and nonprofit organizations.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so I have to butt in here just really quickly.
Speaker 2:
There is a section that's coming up where a lot of really fun stuff was talked about, but unfortunately it was from someone who wasn't with the mic, so I'm just going to give you a quick rundown of what they said because I don't want it to be missed, but the audio is basically unusable.
Speaker 2:
So she mentioned that, for the amount of money that they usually get each year is generally about $30,000 to $40,000 that they're able to give to charities, and Bill said that this year they collected all of the coins and they're in the middle of the cleaning process. This is also when Dakota jumped in with a really clever joke of oh, you have to have the, you have to launder the money, which was actually pretty good and then they use a cement mixer, a portable cement mixer, to clean the money. And he says that that is finished and they are currently being counted and they have to be brought out in these bags of money and they think that they're going to have quite a bit this year. They've got money sacks full of coins. But I wanted to make sure that you guys got the opportunity to get that bit of information and we're going to jump right back in with Tara.
Speaker 4:
So Dream Lake is another really popular stop in the caverns. A lot of people love that one. It is the largest body of water in the cavern system and it's really interesting though, because it looks so deep, but it's not. It's so shallow, and the really cool thing is that it looks, you know, five to six feet deep in most areas, but most areas it's about a foot deep. The deepest it gets is about 18 to 20 inches deep At the very deepest point. Why does it look so deep? Yeah, well, the reason why it goes that is because it has a perfect mirror reflection of the ceiling above. So it's such clean, pure water. It's all naturally filtered into the caverns and it's so still that it actually provides that perfect mirror reflection. So it's really deceiving. But then, if you like, for example, shine a light down on the water, you can very easily see the bottom of it, because it's right beneath the surface there. It's really cool.
Speaker 2:
I'm also curious this is also just kind of another random question that I thought about but you know they're continuously growing right the inside of these caverns. Are there any examples today of a cavern like that just completely being full, like just filling with these stalagmites and stalactites?
Speaker 4:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you gotta keep in mind, even though this is one of the more heavily decorated caverns in the world, it's also very, very large cavern systems, so there's a lot of space to fill in. So, you know, it's certainly possible to have much smaller cavern systems that are almost completely filled in with formations that make them pretty inaccessible. None of them that I can personally think of. You know, that would be really open to exploring at all, but they definitely would exist out there and, given the chance, if they have long enough to do so, most cavern systems would become much more filled in. You know and that includes ours is still active and growing in some areas. There are some cavern formations that are just continuously wet. So those are still constantly growing and who knows where they'll be thousands and thousands of years in the future. So it's certainly possible to have that somewhere in the world, absolutely.
Speaker 2:
Are there any myths and legends about your caverns? And I bring this up because we just watched the cave. I'm not saying I would recommend it, but we had it on in the background and there were these crazy fat-like creatures that were hunting the explorers and of course they could see through sonar and all this. But I'm just curious do you guys have any myths around?
Speaker 3:
No, I really don't know. Not particularly.
Speaker 2:
You're crushing my superstition dreams right now. Are there any ghosts? I guess people have to eventually have gone missing at some point to have the community around it come up with scary things or scary sounds.
Speaker 4:
We don't know of any paranormal activity, but I will say that we do have an interesting spot in our tour called Skeleton's Gorge, and yeah, that seems like something that you'd be interested in. So Skeleton's Gorge and the Princess Column that's in Skeleton's Gorge were actually both named that because when the explorers first came through back in 1878 they actually discovered at the base of that column down in the gorge several bones, and these bones when they excavated them they actually had them kind of studied the bones. They didn't have many, it was about 20 bone fragments, but they could tell, judging by the hip bones, that they belonged to a young girl, most likely in her late teens to early 20s is what the theory is. And then the fact that they were embedded in several inches of stone was really interesting because that kind of gave us a little bit more of an idea on what happened where she came from. See, the first theory was that she was a Native American who had found the caverns before the explorers had, and that she got lost and died in the cavern system. And that was the theory for a while.
Speaker 4:
But if that had been true they should have found more bones. I mean, there were over 200 bones in the human body. They only found about 20 small fragments. They also were embedded in several inches of stone, and that actually tells us they were here for a few hundred years before the explorers found the caverns. So what most likely happened instead was that she was a Native American who died on the surface, and her bones were washed down into the caverns below by a sinkhole after she had been buried in the area. They did find a little higher up in the gorge Several other bones along the wall, and those actually came from a different individual. Now they couldn't tell if they belonged to a male or a female, but they did contain arthritis, which indicates they came from a much older adult than this young girl. Thank you, and that also further kind of lends to that theory that they were buried on the surface and some of the bones were washed in. The bones were all removed and they're currently still in storage at the Smithsonian in Washington DC. That's really fantastic.
Speaker 2:
It really is very cool. I mean not fantastic for the young woman who passed away but just the fact that the entire story could, kind of we could get a better idea of who she was, or at least what happened to her, remains, that's really cool, very neat stuff, fantastic. All right, let's hear about some organs that are not played by ghosts. Fine, they're still cool.
Speaker 5:
There's probably some stories I could tell you about that.
Speaker 2:
So, just from what I'd gathered, you manage the organ and it sounds like you do a lot of the work inside the cave as well, the caverns as well.
Speaker 5:
Yeah, yeah, I do. We all do lots of different things here.
Speaker 2:
Common of historical places. Everyone's doing multiple, multiple jobs, All right, so tell me a little bit more about so. You were talking obviously I really want to get to this, the organ, but you were saying that sometimes they grow molds on the stalagmites and stalactites, or algae, algae, moss and algae. How do you guys take care of that?
Speaker 5:
We spray it. We use a mixture of a couple of different products and we spray it and it typically grows closer to the lights. The biggest way we combat it is keep the lights off when there's no one down there In between tours, as the tour guides would go through, they would cut the lights on and off, which also helps keep people up with the group. So Nobody wants to. And of course the lights are always off at night, and but we do have to treat certain areas to try to keep it under control.
Speaker 2:
And you spray it with. Is it just spray with like a high pressure water?
Speaker 5:
Yeah, yeah, we have some pump sprayers and we have different things we use depending where you're at. We have some that can reach high and then some, you know, we take a little squirt bottle and just give it a couple squirts.
Speaker 2:
Also. All it takes is the water and you just kind of wipe it away. You don't have to use anything specific.
Speaker 5:
Yeah, yeah, it's stuff and it's a mixture and I don't want to say, you know, bleach or something like that, but it's a chemical that you can use for or algae. It's the same stuff you could buy, types of stuff you could buy to do the siding on your house. Oh, okay, the vinyl siding and stuff.
Speaker 2:
So, besides keeping up with the algae growing on the features, what are some other maintenance things that you guys have to do with, something that is a cavern with a bunch of really cool things inside?
Speaker 5:
Change light bulbs. It's probably close to 800 lights down there.
Speaker 2:
You said that and I was like oh yeah, big deal, that's a lot of light.
Speaker 5:
Now I will say, since we have gone totally with LED lighting, they last longer and they do a really, really good job. Some of the other maintenance is obviously letting humans in. We have to keep the place clean. You know, we wash down the sidewalks and things like that.
Speaker 2:
I guess there's probably not that much that you have to do to the features themselves. I mean just because they're, I mean they don't change very quickly.
Speaker 5:
No.
Speaker 2:
So they kind of you could just leave them alone. They do the wrong thing. Occasionally wipe them down with water to get rid of some moss.
Speaker 5:
None's ever popped up in the way.
Speaker 2:
Makes sense.
Speaker 5:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
I guess that shows my inexperience of managing a cavern. But the part that is really, really interesting, that you have a lot to do with, is your organ. So tell us a little bit about what this organ is and why it's so cool, because it is really cool.
Speaker 5:
Well, the great stalactite organ was, I guess from the beginning. Mr Leland Sprinkle came through on the tour, brought his son through on his fifth birthday and all the guides would play a little tune on the stalactites in a little section. And he got this idea as he was driving home. He's like you know, he was an engineer, by the way, and an organist and he said I wonder if I could make an organ to play music and use the stalactites as tone sources. So he came back, approached the owners of the company, senior management, and they agreed and the way I understand it, they agreed on a handshake and he started in 1954. He was first played in 1957.
Speaker 2:
So it took him a couple years just to kind of get everything. And I imagine it's probably incredibly complex because you have to find the right tone for the right.
Speaker 5:
Right, and what he did? He would scout for tones and he would go all over the cave and pick ones that were as close as he could find and then actually tune them to concert pitch, and they're still being used today. It covers three and a half acres and that makes it the largest musical instrument.
Speaker 2:
How does one tune? Was he just like shaving off little bits?
Speaker 5:
You sand it, just sand it down. Oh, okay. Yep, you would find one that you, of course, can't add to it, but you can take them down and, if I remember correctly, he actually found as a two or three that were considered close enough to be concert pitch Does not really. Yeah, but the rest had to be tuned.
Speaker 2:
How many are there?
Speaker 5:
Right now we're running 37, which is three octaves, and one note of the fifth octave is what we're running. We do have marked probably close to 20 more that we could expand to if we decide to. The organ is capable of doing so much more than what it's doing now, but we just haven't made that decision to expand it anymore.
Speaker 2:
Well, when you said I mean it's the technically the largest instrument right in the world. But I'm curious do you just have little wires with little microphones and a little?
Speaker 5:
tiny hammer. We don't use microphones. What we do is a good example, like I would explain to my tours when I was a tour guide, like 100 years ago.
Speaker 2:
I would say.
Speaker 5:
I'd say if I were to walk up to the console and push down on the key, it would send electrical impulse to a celluloid Some people call them plungers, some people call them hammers and it would gently tap the stalactite. That has been tuned and it gives off the tone.
Speaker 2:
Oh, and I guess, since this is in a cavern, you can hear it.
Speaker 5:
Yeah, you can hear it Now what we have done, because some are so far away we do use an amplification system. We don't use microphones. What we do is we use a magnetic pickup and it's basically like a guitar pickup type thing and it sits next to the stalactite and of course you can't really see this. I guess you can, but it sits next to the stalactite and there's a bolt in the bottom of the stalactite. The bolt's half nickel, half iron, and a magnetic pickup is basically a magnet wrapped with a coil wire, so it just picks up the vibration and takes it back to our sound system. So you couldn't talk into it, they wouldn't pick that up, but it will pick up a vibration.
Speaker 2:
And I guess you guys never actually have to go back, just like how you do with a piano and you have to retune it, you guys.
Speaker 5:
We haven't had to retune one yet, so and I don't know that we will, but maybe someday. The biggest problem with having the instrument down there is the constant humidity, because it's near 100% humidity and there's a lot of electronics involved, so it is a lot of maintenance to this machine to keep it going.
Speaker 2:
And everything feeds back into. Basically and I am not really in with instruments I don't know how to do any of that. So I'm assuming the organ is like a little piano and you can push the keys and then that's what's sending those impulses. So it's all centralized in this one space.
Speaker 5:
You can have someone sitting and playing. We bring all the sound back to the cathedral, which is one of the largest rooms that she was talking about earlier, and that's where the console is. It's a four-manual console that we use.
Speaker 2:
What does that mean?
Speaker 5:
Sorry it has four keyboards.
Speaker 2:
Okay, okay, cool.
Speaker 5:
We use the bottom to the. We use the bottom of single notes is what I call it. The next keyboard up is they're coupled by octaves.
Speaker 2:
Do you guys have someone that comes down and periodically plays, or do people get to hear this when they come?
Speaker 5:
Yeah, we have an automatic system to play it for EverTour, so EverTour gets to hear it. It's based like a player piano, if you remember when they would have the roll with the sheet of plastic over it, and we have that system. We have updated that some over time, but it is a live performance and if you're standing in the right spot you can see the celluloid strike, the stalactites.
Speaker 2:
What's the melody that's playing?
Speaker 5:
Right now it's a mighty fortress. We're probably gonna soon switch it to O'Shanador, because that's kind of themed with the valley here.
Speaker 2:
Oh, that's fantastic.
Speaker 5:
We're able to play a lot of different songs. We have Christmas songs, we have America the Beautiful. I came to Rolktop. We got a bunch of different things we could play.
Speaker 2:
So what they were telling me earlier is that they're going to tune it to play the Curator's Choice opening intro song. They don't know this, but no. No. So I'm curious too when you guys do like weddings and things, do you play the wedding song?
Speaker 5:
No, I have not made that for it yet. We have talked about that. We had a meeting not too long ago. We were talking about if we should offer that or not.
Speaker 2:
So you said it's the automatic, so it automatically plays. Can someone sit down and play it? Oh wow, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 5:
We don't offer that very often. We have it played for special occasions. We've had some few things like was it Good Morning America was here? Some different things like that's been here and we would have someone play it for them.
Speaker 2:
That's really cool. So you can't just be like, hey look, I play piano, let me give it a shot, something a little bit more.
Speaker 5:
I keep it locked. I get it all the time.
Speaker 2:
Well, and then you would definitely get that one parent that's like no, my child's a prodigy, and they come over and they just start banging the keys.
Speaker 5:
Yeah, exactly, we're very protective over the instrument.
Speaker 2:
That's really really cool. Well, thank you guys so much. This was so cool. I learned so much today.
Speaker 4:
Welcome. Thank you for coming.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, no, it was fantastic. I'm so excited. It's going to be a great episode.