WARREN COUNTY
Crump's Cave.—A mile north of Smith's Grove is a large sink hole, from one side of which extends a cave nearly a mile long. There is abundant room and a good light near the front, and it is reported that quantities of ashes were formerly to be seen on the earth a short distance in. A considerable outside area drains into the cave, and the floor at the present time is everywhere so wet as to be quite muddy. Much water also falls from the roof. A hydraulic ram, not far from the entrance, formerly forced water from one of these falls to the farm residence. A descent of 6 feet, over large rocks and wet earth, brings one to the nearly level floor, 40 feet from the mouth. The amount of flood water running into the cave is indicated by a gully 4 feet deep and the same in width, while trash and driftwood litter the floor from wall to wall for more than a hundred yards.
Thomas Cave.—This is a mile north of Bowling Green. The roof of a cavern has fallen in and forms a high mound of rocky débris, down which a path winds on each side, giving access toward either end of the cavern. There is scarcely a possibility that it was ever occupied.
Mill Cave.—Three miles south of Bowling Green a stream emerges from the foot of a slope, flows a hundred yards through a canyon-like open channel, and disappears under a cliff. This is another instance of an open cave due to a falling roof. The open end is large and forms an excellent shelter for cattle. On either side of the stream, under the cliff, is a shelf or projecting ledge, covered with loose stones. Neither is 2 feet higher than the water level in a wet season.
BARREN COUNTY
Payne Cave.—This, also known as Saltpeter Cave, is near Temple Hill, 9 miles southeast of Glasgow. The bluff in which it is situated is a conglomerate limestone, rising from the waters of Skagg's Creek. The cave has three different entrances, 100 feet or more apart, and each entrance is broken into three or four by columns or masses of stone that have resisted erosion. None of the entrances is large, or opens into spacious chambers within daylight. Flood marks are visible in all, and it is said that after prolonged or heavy spring rains the water covers the floors.
Ben Smith's Cave.—This was discovered while digging out a fox den. It is a tunnel-like cavity, not more than 6 feet high or wide, and not suitable for habitation. It lies a mile and a half south of Temple Hill.
Ford's Cave.—This is between Freedom and Mount Hermon, about 14 miles southeast of Glasgow. Originally the entrance was about 8 feet high and 20 feet wide, and opened into a well-lighted chamber probably 40 feet wide and 60 feet long. The floor was of earth and level, with ample space between it and the roof, as shown by marks on the walls, for people to move about readily in any part of the room. The entrance is now artificially closed by earth and stone, except for a space 4 feet square in which a door is hung. Old men in the neighborhood claim they can remember when the floor was 20 feet lower than at present; a manifest impossibility, for that measure would bring it several feet lower than the bed of Mill Creek just in front of the cave. They also claim that blocks of conglomerate and travertine 5 to 10 feet in each dimension have formed from "drip" within their recollection; which, if true, would prove these persons to be almost contemporaneous with the cave men. The more probable statement is also made by them that in early days saltpeter workers dug up and leached all the earth in the cave, filling the entrance and the narrow space before it with the leached earth from the front part of the cave and throwing that from farther back into the cavities and pits left by the prior workings. Inside the cave, near the entrance, is a never-failing spring whose waters flow through a short, narrow crevice at one side. While easily accessible, the water does not reach any of the earth floor.
This would have been an excellent site for aboriginal residence, but there is now no undisturbed earth within daylight nor for some distance beyond, and no one can remember that anything of an artificial nature was ever exhumed.