Floyd Collins and Sand Cave
Near Mammoth Cave, Kentucky
In the winter of nineteen twenty-five, a local cave explorer named Floyd Collins was crawling alone through a tight new passage in Sand Cave, hoping to find a show cave that would make his family's fortune. On the way out, he knocked loose a rock that fell and pinned his foot, wedging him fast about fifty-five feet underground in a crawlway barely wide enough to breathe in. He could not move, and no one could reach the rock to free him.
What followed became one of the great news sensations of the age. A young reporter squeezed down to interview Collins face to face, and the story exploded across the country. It ran on the front page of newspapers everywhere for two solid weeks and became one of the first great live stories of national radio.
Crowds swelled to thousands at the surface, and vendors sold hamburgers and balloons in a carnival above a dying man. Rescuers finally dug a shaft down to him after more than two weeks, but they were too late. Floyd Collins had died of exposure and thirst in the dark.
His ordeal helped push the whole country to protect Kentucky's cave country as a national park.
