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previous--Holston Valley pg222
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continued
Tennessee, They accompanied Jim on an extensive six-hour, fast-paced tour of the cave. Jim was matter-of-fact and the Whittemores were astonished as the famous Morrell Cave Dog accompanied the trio on their entire trip. During 1971, a rash of livestock deaths and barn burnings ran through the area in the cave's vicinity. Locals claimed that a bunch of hippies lived in the cave and ran naked through the fields at night, burning barns and killing cattle. The cattle were supposedly dragged back to the cave where they were eaten raw by their captives. The Sullivan County Sheriff's Department investigated the rumor, and awakened Jim one night about 3:00 AM for a tour through the cave. As a reward for waking him up, Jim gave the uniformed policeman an eight-hour tour through the whole cave, thereby squelching the rumor of hippies inhabiting the cave!
In wandering over the Virginia hills trying to escape from the Dunganon Monster, Easter Pig found an unusual place along Stoney Creek north of Fort Blackmore. He was driving along a muddy road when he passed an opening in the hillside. Farther on, he was forced to stop his vehicle and continue on foot, crossing huge sandstone boulders, and fording portions of Stoney Creek. In time he came to an idyllic field with a haunted, deserted house on a towering hillside. This secluded paradise, often visited by maraudering wild beasts, was named Camp Cave and became the side of the first three Holston Valley Grotto picnics and numerous afternoon swimming parties.
One of the last VAR projects was held in Sneedville, TN in 1972. The purpose was map some of the larger known caves and to do a bit of ridgewalking. Because everyone except HVG members were unfamiliar with the area, project coordinator Jay Cox invented an Easter egg-beer hunt. He craftily placed cave locations and associated jobs on slips of paper inside plastic eggs. Also, he added slips of paper which entitled the finder to a free quart of beer. Then he hid the eggs around the campground for cavers to find, and thus get a job to do. For those who attended, this was their first experience with Melungeons and the town's famous first restaurant, the Green Top Inn. Cavers visiting the Inn after Friday night received the impression that the innkeeper was angry. Indeed he was; as it turned out Jay had arranged with the gentleman to have enough food prepared Friday night to feed each caver at least three meals. Jay had forgotten that most of those attending would be driving from points to the north, and would not arrive until the wee hours of Friday night. So much for maintaining good public relations!
In late 1973, just as grotto members were wondering if the grotto was on the way out, several Bristol, TN men from the telephone company contacted HVG. A caving trip to Carden's Cavewas taken, resulting in Terry Welch, Butch Tyson and Danny Baker joining the NSS. With the new influx of members more training trips for vertical techniques were in order.
HVG cavers Whitt, Wes Thorne, who moved to the area in 1974, Jim Beck and the Powers boys regularly attended DON Conventions in Pennington Cap each Thanksgiving, and continued to help Holsinger when he spent summer vacations from teaching at Old Dominion University in southwestern Virginia.
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But, with Jay's ties to U.T., and with HVG members taking a more active part in the Tennessee Cave Survey activities, interest in caves began to swing away from the VAR. HVG became a member of the Southeastern Region, attended SERA meetings and Cave Carnivals, attended several Cumberland Caverns Christmas parties, and helped Jay with his ridgewalking trips in the Buffalo Cove area of Fentress County, TN.
During the summer of 1974, HVG members began week night trips to Obey's Creek Cavenear Gate City, VA. Grotto members met at 6:30 PM in Kingsport, were in the cave by 7:30, mapped until 9:30, stopped at the Bird in Gate City, and were home by midnight. The cave entrance had a peculiar fascination for the mappers in that it had a cow manure "glacier" taking up the entire entry way. On the first trip, enterprising intrepid cavers Butch Tyson and Whitt had carried large rocks from the nearby creek, and made a causeway at the right side of the entrance. On subsequent trips the rocks gradually sank in the goo, and had to be replaced. It was quite a feat of agility to make a way along the stones in a bent-over position, then make a dive into a crumbly dirt crawlway, all the while trying to avoid the slime. On one trip, after a week of rain, we found that sloppy muck covered by two inches of clear water. We knew that we would have to get wet for the water covered what we were able to see of the crawlway, but we wondered if we would still be able to avoid the excrement. I, being the first in, was able to make a cautious trip around the obnoxious sludge, but subsequent, persons mixed water and manure. On our way out we all crawled in the now-smelly filth and all smelled like a cesspool as we slogged toward our vehicles.
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Tom Vigourposes behind VPI Cave Survey truck in the land of the Dungannon Monster, Lee County, VA, 1967. Photo by D. E. Yeatts. |
In 1975, Butch and Terry attended a meeting of the Bristol Rock and Gem Club at which Roy Powers, an independent caver from Abingdon was to be the speaker. Whitt later contacted Roy and Carol Powers and invited them to a VPI Grotto banquet. Soon after, Roy joined the NSS and formed the Mountain Empire Grotto.
Since 1968, Whitt and Annie had been going to New Paris, PA, to help with fieldwork at the Carnegie Museum's field cabin. This did not stop once they had moved to Tennessee, and many grotto members took this trip with them. On one trip, Jim Hixson, his two dogs Linda and Gretchen, plus Nancy Wick, rode with Annie and Whitt in their Bronco from Johnson City to PA and back. Linda insisted on sitting in Annie's lap in the front seat, and as they drove through the morning light toward the cabin, barked at the cows. In 1976, Harold Hamilton, of the Museum, began working with Whitt to look for and examine possible Ice Age bone deposits in area caves. Many grotto members have assisted in the on-going project during the last three years.
Prospects for a brighter future as far as membership with the new ETSU Medical School drawing interested persons and the population growth for the entire area expecting to increase greatly in the next five years. --Anne Whittemore, April 1979.
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