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continued
Emmons Graham during the summer. The group rendezvoused near Greenville, and made base camp in a field three miles north of the village. Among the caves explored were Head of Mill Pond Cave and Laurel Creek Cave; the latter being known locally as Water Cave. The cavers were intrigued by the fact that both caves were large and could be explored without using ropes or resorting to much stooping or crawling. They were further impressed that the Mill Pond Cave had three known large entrances and contained a number of V-type leaching vats, remnants of extensive saltpeter workings. They noted in an article in the NSS NEWSLETTER that wheel tracks of the carts and hoof prints of the draft animals used to haul the nitrate from the cave could still be seen.
When the grotto first began looking for caves to explore, Burt Ash researched several WV Geological Survey books, and found about thirty caves listed. Before Bill Davies put his book out, the Charleston Grotto had about 475 listed in Greenbrier, Monroe, Pocahontas and Pendleton Counties. Known to them were Grapevine, Snedegar Crookshanks, Head-of-Mill-Pond, Laurel Creek, Organ, Hedricks, Hell Hole and Schoolhouse. It was a simple matter to find caves; the cavers would stop at any country store or gas station to ask about caves. They'd usually pick up information on half-a-dozen or so with very little difficulty.
During 1946 and 1947 caving activities were mainly sight-seeing trips with very few records kept and no one concentrating on a particular area or system. But by 1948 grotto members had mapped 6200 feet of passage in Head-of- Mill-Pond Cave and were beginning the first of many trips into Hedricks Cave and its eventually extensive system. One trip during that year was to Tory Cave near Franklin, WV, where a number of Hessian soldiers were reputed to have been trapped in a rock fall which sealed the entrance. The grotto also hosted a NSS field trip on July 35 in Monroe County, WV, producing an excellent booklet for the occasion of maps, cave locations and descriptions.--I/O Committee, NSS Files.
Bob Handley, rappelling demonstration at Charleston Convention, 1951. Photo by S. A. Boyd. |
During 1949, H.H. (Mike) McGriff relates in his annual report that while membership in the grotto decreased during the year, there were more actively participating members than in any previous year. The grotto was active during this year in exploring and mapping in the Organ-Hedricks System. This was also the year that Bob Barnes was lowered down the deepest vertical shaft known in the eastern United States, Mott Hole. [See stories elsewhere.]
Elected in February 1950 to serve as chairman and vice-chairman, respectively, were Robert Flack and Bob Handley. During the year, grotto members photographed evidence of saltpeter mining in Head-ofMill Pond Cave.
Soon after a March 1951 election in which Bob Barnes was voted as chairman and Bob Handley as treasurer, the Charleston Grotto hosted the April NSS Convention. This was the first convention to be held outside of Washington, D.C. Bob Handley notes: That was a pretty memorable convention for me, especially because of the rope climbing exhibition that was put on down the side of one of the local department stores. I had obtained newspaper publicity ahead of time announcing that I was going to come down off the building in four leaps in ten seconds. When the rappel actually occurred, I came down off the building in three jumps and six and a half seconds! It was so fast that the news; photographer missed the whole thing! The picture that appeared in the paper with my name on it was actually somebody else. That was a very successful convention and I guess there really havent been any others back in Washington since then.
Also, during 1951, grotto members found another entrance to the Organ-Hedricks Cave System.
In 1953 Earl Thierry was in Charleston, and was elected vice- chairman of the grotto. From his cave log of field trips for the first half of 1953 are the following notes: Seventeen cavers to Grapevine Cave to try movies with the light of four Coleman gasoline lanterns (very poor results); discovery of Jarretts Water Cave; a two-man trip to further explore Ludingtons Cave; seven cavers on an exploration trip to Windy Mouth Cave. Explored 6800 feet and the cave was still going strong; exploration trip into Organ Cave, first party to gain entry into Phantom Passage; Culverson Creek Cave found and partially explored, covered 3/4 of a mile and the large stream passage was still going strong.--I/O Committee, NSS Files.
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During the following years, the Grotto continued to work on the Organ-Hedricks survey, and membership appears to have been stable. Handley notes that: the group was broken into three different factions: cavers, campers and partiers. The campers went camping and used caving as an excuse to go camping, and the partiers used both caving and camping as an excuse to have a party. We had a time! I think what finally broke up the Grotto was that the ones who were caving voted to use grotto funds to buy a 1O0-pound drum of carbide. The partiers never got over that, and the grotto just sort of fell apart!
In June 1956, Bertrand D. Ash then grotto chairman, wrote to the NSS Grottos Committee Chairman announcing the deactivation of the Charleston Grotto as a functioning organization affiliated with the NSS. - NSS I/O Committee Files
Prior to the deactivation of the grotto, Bob Handley had conceived the idea of the Great Savannah Project which would be a study of the caves in the limestone plateau in the vicinity of Lewisburg. This idea became the basis of caving in a group that grew out of the dedicated cavers of the old Charleston Grotto West Virginia Association for Cave Studies, better known as WVACS.
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