Arkansas's Living Cave of Mystery

Darkness and mystery lie inside a dark, round hole, hidden by brambles and brush on the side of an Ozark Mountain in Arkansas. Over a billion years ago, a prehistoric sea covered this mountain and all the land around it. When the floor of the ocean began to lift, it formed a range we know as the Ozark Mountains.It took at least 120 million years for this land formation to emerge. When the land began to appear, rainwater containing carbonic acid from rotten leaves and vegetation seeped into the cracks and crevices creating the tool that was used to form this huge cavern we now call Blanchard's Cavern.

The cavern runs for many miles underground and emerges at another opening, only this time a cold, clear river of water rushes from within.

John H. Blanchard, a veteran of the civil war, left his home in Kentucky to find a place of tranquillity. The war had been hard on John and he needed peace and solitude. He homesteaded 160 acres of prime land near this river of water and later built a gristmill on its banks. Thus the name of the river that rushed from the mountain was named Blanchard Springs.

It is thought that perhaps a 1000 years ago, the Bluff Dweller Indians of that area were the first explorers. One can only speculate and use his imagination as no records indicate that this is fact.

Roger Bottoms is the first person documented to have visited the cave in 1955. What he saw was writing on the cave wall that dated back to 1920. Jack Bragg, another explorer of the cave, claimed to have also seen writing on the wall near the bottom of the entrance that said, "John, 1922." He also brought back with him, pieces of a rotten rope ladder that he found lying behind a pile of rocks at the bottom of the shaft.

Roger Bottoms returned later that year with three other men, Louis and Jimmy Grobmyer and John Blake. They set up a small camp inside the cave room near the entrance. Roger Bottoms wanted to explore the East Side of the cave. It was on this exploration that he was crawling along one of the ledges and discovered several burned cane torches along with the skeletal remains of what was later identified as an Indian. On a later exploration, as he was crawling along the West Side, he discovered fingerprints and some small moccasin footprints on the huge flowstone in what is now called the 3rd level.

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