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The Holston Valley Grotto was formed in 1962. Early members included Powell Foster of Kingsport and Hugh Thompson of Johnson City. We are not sure about the activities of the group, but believe they centered around mapping of infamous Morrell Caveand the locating of other caves in the area. From the records, we know that the club formed into three sections, one in each of the Tri-Cities.
John Holsinger spent two years with the Biology Department at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City during 1967-68, and used the opportunity the proximity afforded him to further his studies of southwestern Virginia caves. While he was in the area, he contacted some of the older HVG cavers like Powell Foster, and they, in turn, introduced John to some young cavers in the area. Among this group were Sammy Taylor, Sam Pinkerton, Tommy Hodges, Jim Beck, Don Finley, Jim Groseclose, Clyde Moore, and Guy, Andy, and John S. Powers.
In their quest for new caves, Sammy, Sam and Tommy ran into Johnny Cassel who lived in a one room shack between Dunganon and Ft. Blackmore, VA. He had an unerring ability of finding caves in a most peculiar way. The venerable Easter Pig describes the odd method; "He would run into a field looking neither left nor right, turn 60 one way, turn back, point, and two miles later there'd be a cave." After being offered a breakfast of 'possum meat and observing Johnny's usual wild, unkempt appearance, the Kingsport boys dubbed him the Dungannon Monster.
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The Dunggannan Monster, "meanest sonofabitch in the valley" |
Because of his earlier ties with Virginia-West Virginia caving, Holsinger introduced Holston Valley Grotto members to the VAR. Within several months of his arrival to the Tri-Cities area, Easter Pig and John Powers were helping Jim Hixson survey in Windy Mouth Cave, WV. About this time Holsinger also introduced Whitt to several HVG members. They told Whitt they were having trouble getting meeting notices to members and Whitt volunteered to help out. They rewarded him by electing him secretary of the Grotto. Naturally, this meant he ought to attend Grotto meetings! At this time, 1968-1969, VPI cavers Alan Armstrong, Tom Vigour, Paul Broughton, Whitt and Annie were driving one or two week nights per month to Fishersville, VA, to support the newly-formed Shenandoah Valley Grotto. A drive on Thursday night to Bristol was therefore taken in stride.
At this time, HVG was meeting in the upper room of a Bristol, VA bank, and going to a beer joint for socializing after the meeting. The meeting place was retained until mid-1969 when a wedding party failed to clean up properly; the bank officials were forced to quit their policy of allowing the assembly hall to be used by the public. From that date, HVG has never had a permanent meeting place. R.E. and Anne Whittemore moved to Johnson City in June 1969, thereby solidifying HVG's ties with the Virginia Region. In the fall of 1969, they advertised on the ETSU campus and gained a large group of new members, of whom two, Doris Jones Welch and Hal Gibson, are still members. In October 1969, HVG sponsored the VAR Fall meeting at the Downtowner Motel in Kingsport, TN.
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During the next three years HVG members sport caved in upper East Tennessee and southwestern Virginia in an effort to learn the area caves and also to train new members in the art of caving. Whitt continued surveying projects he'd started while at VPI, and then turned his attention toward a systematic survey of caves in Washington County, TN. Whitt also started a grotto newsletter, the original GUANO GAZETTE, which was purely humor and had as its logo a heap of stinking guano above which bats fluttered about holding signs saying: "Roll in it!" "Crawl thru it!" "Hand it to your friends!" Two issues of this generally worthless publication were put out after which the editor accepted a staff position with the VAR's REGION RECORD.
About this time, the club received a shot in the arm from Jay Cox, a Dobyns-Bennett High School student in Kingsport. Jay had been caving since he was a young punk, and during his junior and senior years of high school, had organized his caving buddies into locating all the caves in Sullivan County, TN. From Whitt he learned elements of cave mapping, and rapidly accumulated a stack of cave maps. During his first year at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Jay joined the Smoky Mountain Grotto. He learned that since Barr's book CAVES OF TENNESSEE had been published, no other systematic survey or record-keeping of known Tennessee caves had been done. Calling all the state's interested cavers together in Jefferson City, the Tennessee Cave Survey was organized with two cochairmen, and three directors each from East and West Tennessee. Sam Dunaway, an ex-VPI caver, served as the Survey's first secretary/treasurer.
Mary Taylor, Sammy's wife, took Over as secretary-treasurer in 1971 to give Anne a break. During this year, the Taylors were newly married and also attending ETSU. In order to furnish their kitchen, they decided to use the grotto's treasury to help them obtain a set of dishes being offered by one of Johnson City's banks for new accounts. Accordingly, they deposited the treasury in one of the branches, then took out part of the money and opened a new account under a different name in another branch. Over a period of several months the grotto's money was withdrawn and deposited six to eight times until chairman, Jim Groseclose, put an end to the situation by firing Mary from her grotto position.
Jim Groseclose served as chairman of HVG for several years, from about 1968 through 1970. He and Clyde Moore, who made the first cable ladder owned., by the grotto, found many new caves in the Bristol-Blountville area. Jim caved mainly in Morrell Caveand knew the cave well. Soon after the Whittemores moved to
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