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Enjoy beauty, nature of Dunbar Cave

By STACY SMITH SEGOVIA
The Leaf-Chronicle
Clarksville, TN

People who step into the dark, cool recesses of Dunbar Cave step into a time that predates recorded history.

Prehistoric cave drawings were found in Dunbar Cave in January 2005. Pam Seay was in the first group to tour the cave after the drawings' existence was announced to the public in 2006.

"I think it's so fascinating," Seay says. "One drawing is a star shape, another is a comet, another is a mythical man creature lying down with claws and a headdress with a hatchet coming out of it."

Seay took her daughter, Katie Dombert, and her friend, Peter Goodwin, who were visiting Clarksville from Auburn, Ala., last weekend, on Dunbar Cave's first cave hikes of 2007. The hikes resume 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. March 17, 18 and 31, and continue 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. every Saturday and Sunday in April and May.

Because they were on the first tours of the season, Seay and her out-of-town guests saw something unusual.

"There were still some hibernating bats. I have never seen a bat in the cave before," says Seay, who hikes Dunbar Cave three or four times a year. "We could see them clinging to the wall of the cave."

Friends of Dunbar Cave's Web site, http://www.dunbarcave.org, explains that there are "no cave hikes in December, January and February so that the bats can hibernate in peace."
Read on
http://www.theleafchronicle.com/apps/pb ... /703090302

Read all about Dunbar Cave in Larry Mathew's excellent book, available from the NSS Bookstore. http://www.nssbookstore.org

Dunbar Cave: The Showplace of the South. The history of Dunbar Cave, Tennessee, from its days as a show cave and resort in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the modern exploration by the Northern Indiana Grotto that took it from 3 to over 8 miles and connected two new entrances. An inspiration to small grottos far from caves. Illustrated with old postcards and modern photos and maps.

You might be interested to know that those Indian Glyphs on the wall, that are now the HIGHLIGHT of the cave tour, were discovered on January 15, 2005 by NSS members Joe Douglas and Larry E. Matthews. They were accompanied on this trip by Park Specialist Amy Wallace and local historian Billyfrank Morrison.

They are briefly mentioned on page 9 of the Dunbar Cave book.

The archaeologists hadn't had a chance to examine them at the time the book went to print, but when I update the book, I'm sure there will be a full chapter on them.

Larry E. Matthews
NSS #6792-F