Season 5
2. UTAH’S TIMPANOGOS CAVE & THE NATIONAL MONUMENT’S CENTENNIAL YEAR (1922-2022)
Transcript
Brad Westwood Welcome to the podcast. Speak Your Piece. This is a podcast about Utah's history produced by the Utah Department of Culture and Community Engagement. I'm Brad Westwood, senior public historian. My job is to make the very best, the most interesting, the most accurate history of Utah, accessible to the widest audience. We hope if there's one place, one podcast, you get your Utah history fix. Brad Westwood We hope this is the place. If you subscribe to this podcast or if this is your first time listening, we hope you'll go back and listen to the dozens of other prior episodes. Please rate and review. Speak your piece. Finally, if you have any ideas about Utah's history, you know an author that tells a story and it needs to be told. Brad Westwood Will you let us know? You can go to ask a historian at Utah dot gov and include speaker piece on the top line. My guest today is Cami McKinney, who is a program manager for Resource Stewardship and Interpretation at the Timpanogos Cave National Monument located in American Fork. Hello, Cami. Cami McKinney Hi. Good morning. Brad Westwood So glad to have you here. We met, what, 20 years ago or so when I was working at BYU. And you were doing the research on the book we're talking about? Cami McKinney Yes, we did. Brad Westwood I remember that very well. Well, for 25 years, Cami has served as a National Park Service Ranger. Cami began working for the Timpanogos Cave National Monument in 1997 and has loved digging into the history of the Timpanogos Cave and American Fork Canyon ever since. She is the author of Heart of the Mountain A History of Timpanogos Cave, which will be included in the link in today's show notes. Brad Westwood Cami received a master's degree in Natural Resources at Utah State University and Logan once more. Welcome. Welcome, Cami. Cami McKinney Thank you. Brad Westwood Now, you said your come from a family of people involved in the National Park Service. Tell me about that. Cami McKinney Oh, yes. When I was in junior high and high school, my mother became a park ranger at Timpanogos Cave. And as a as a teen, I would sometimes hike up to the cave after school to walk her home at the end of the day. And she she loved that mountain. She loved that trail. And and it just seemed like a natural next step for me when I moved into college, I thought it would be a great place to start working. Cami McKinney It was by far the coolest job I could imagine. Brad Westwood And your mother was involved in the reenactments and doing things in historical costume? Cami McKinney Absolutely. My mother, she's one that never, never just reaches the ends of her achievements. So once she felt like she had a great cave tour, then she needed to make it a better cave tour. And she started researching different historical figures involved in the discovery of Timpanogos Cave. And the next thing you know, she was dressed in period costume and giving cave tours in the voice of one of the cave discovers. Brad Westwood Interesting. Well, I know you're a committed individual as well, just like your mother and have been committed to the conservation and the interpretation and the story of Timpanogos. Cami McKinney I love it. Brad Westwood We're going to get into that. Now the first five years of my career, I was a photo archivist, and what I remember seeing most in my personal family albums is photos of Timp Cave, along with other beloved parks. Cami What makes this natural geological treasure so beloved in Utah and beyond? Cami McKinney I think it's remarkable that you see pictures because we do have visitors come every single day that are coming because of exactly what you've said there, that their parents or grandparents have these remarkable memories. It usually involves some of the underplaying or overplaying the difficulty of hiking up to the cave. But I think as Utah has grown, their relationship with the cave has continued to be meaningful for all of these people. Cami McKinney And and people have a hard time remembering that the park was busy. But Timpanogos Cave has been busy since the 1920s, and everybody that comes creates their own relationship and their own stories. And sometimes those stories keep them coming back over and over again. Brad Westwood Well, it just surprises me because it's subterranean. You know, you're in caves and yet somehow there's pictures taken. Usually on the trail. I mean, there's lots of trail photos. Cami McKinney Absolutely. Brad Westwood But but it's it's a staple in the vacationing and the weekend experience for, you know, thousands tens of thousands of Utahns each year. Well, October 14th, 2022 will be the hundredth anniversary since the Timpanogos Cave was designated and signed into law as a national park by President Warren G. Harding. Will you tell us about the various events that the National Park Service is planning related to this centennial year? Cami McKinney Well, we've been celebrating all year long. We've been counting down to this 100th birthday of the national monument. But we've also been hitting a lot of centennial milestones from the centennial of the caves being discovered, the trail being created in the very first cave tours, where literally 100 years ago, before it became a national monument. And one of the things we thought would be really meaningful for people is to see the cave, how it was in the beginning. Cami McKinney And this year we began offering lantern tours. And just the first two tours, the day we keep the lights out and we, we provide lanterns and people can see what the cave looks like, you know, under the flickering glow of lantern light. Brad Westwood Which would have been how it would have been discovered. Cami McKinney Exactly. And it's even though you're seeing some of those same things, it strikes you differently. And it's it's just meaningful. It's beautiful to be there. Brad Westwood Well, I think of my first experience. It was with the glow of lots of accentuating light, too, you know, like the red light they had behind the uh one of the major features, the heart of Timpanogos. I mean, they have tried to make it a dramatic experience and kind of let technology assist. I think just having a lantern in your hand and watching it wag in somebody's hand in the darkness must be really fun. Cami McKinney It's beautiful. And visitors love it. The hard part, of course, it's we've got to do it when the lights are all out. And so they're their first two tours of the day. So you've got to get up early to get those tours. Brad Westwood What times that? Cami McKinney It's at 6:45 and 7:00 a.m.. It's crazy, but people are coming and they it's worth getting up for. One of the other things we did this year was there are a lot of people that their relationship with the Timpanogos Cave, National Monument is less about the cave and more about the trail and the mountain. And so we challenged people to hike the trail 100 times. Cami McKinney And already I think we have almost 50 people that have tried the trail 100 times this summer. Brad Westwood What do you give them? Cami McKinney We're going to do an award ceremony on October 14th. And there's a there's a finisher medal. There's a lot of people that are still working towards that goal. So they they still have a month ago. Yeah. So I'm guessing we're going to have a few more, but when that trail becomes, you know, the kind of the hardest, the most memorable part of your visit to the cave, it's hard to believe that somebody would want to do it 100 times. Brad Westwood Well, now we better talk about when you close because you hibernate. You're in the up in the tough part of a mountain on a cliff. So when do you close this season? Cami McKinney Cause this year is October 14th, but we're going to keep the trail open for a little bit longer if the weather allows us to. And the visitor center will close October 31st. But the mountain is really steep. It gets icy and avalanches. And and so we've got to we've got to get it closed while we can still be on the mountain safely and then we'll open the doors again in May next year. Brad Westwood And so you're closed usually from mid-October to May. Yep. To understand this system of caves, we need to visit a visualization exercise. Cami, I'd like to ask you if you could just paint a picture for our listeners. What is in and around the cave? Caves? Yes, it's plural. Cami McKinney Let me tell you about Timpanogos Cave, National Monument. Sometimes it's hard to imagine as you drive up one of these these narrow canyons that rise the Wasatch Front, that as you drive up into the steep canyon, the cliff walls rise around you. And from the visitor center at the bottom of the canyon, it is a mile and a half hike up one steep side of the canyon, 1100 vertical feet. Cami McKinney And rangers and visitors alike have to navigate that trail in order to get up to the mountain. And they they as they're climbing, you know, they're leaving the valley floor. They're leaving the sounds of the river, and they're reaching the caves high on the cliff face. And all of a sudden you leave the world that, you know, the trees and the mountains, and you head into the darkness of the cave. Brad Westwood And tell me the what's the width, the depth, the length. Tell us some of the dimensional descriptions. Cami McKinney What people see on their cave tours is actually, three separate caves. They've been connected by manmade tunnels in 1939 and together all mapped out. All the crawling passages is one mile of cave passage. But your cave tour is just a little more than than a third of a mile. They're underground for about an hour, unless you take the introduction, the caving tours. Cami McKinney And that is a 90 minute, to two hour cave tour where you wear hard hats and headlamps and crawl off into the dark. Brad Westwood Into the passages otherwise not used by the public. Cami McKinney Exactly. Well, it's a it's a new adventure. Brad Westwood That's wonderful. Wow. And tell me about the colors and the materials. I mean, when you take that lamp and you and you cast the light up, what are people seeing? Cami McKinney Oh, goodness. Well, one of the things that makes Timpanogos Cave National Monument so unique is that intimate connection that you can have with the rock around you. And often when you go into caves, in caves around the world, you'll see whites and browns. But the cave formations, the stalactites at Timpanogos Cave, have yellows and greens, purples and oranges. Brad Westwood So let's talk about those formations. Sure. There's disillusion and deposition. There's all this water material or materials that are brought by water. Would you help us describe these words and define them? Cami McKinney Sure. I'm going to start with a word that no one is ever going to use, but maybe you'll get lucky using it in Scrabble someday. And the word is speleology and speleology is the study of caves. Speleo is a Latin word for caves. And so a lot of these geologic terms sometimes sound a little bit foreign. Cami McKinney But speleogenesis is the study of the origin of the cave. The hole that you're standing in, a speleothem, is the growth, like a stalactite or a helictite. The formations that you see that are on top of the speleogen and the space. And most people, what they love seeing the most is the speleothem. And within that, there's a it's basically how water leaves behind a deposit inside the cave. Cami McKinney And as water drips in the cave, it drips, it evaporates air flow in, and it changes where that little molecule of calcite can be a stalactite. The ones that are hanging from the. Brad Westwood Ceiling, from the ceiling. Cami McKinney Correct. They hang tight to the ceiling. Stalagmite are the ones on the ground. You might trip on it. Brad Westwood What's what's the ones that look like snowflakes? Cami McKinney That would be your anthodites. And they're kind of crystallized. Sometimes they're they're called frost work because you have these incredible, delicate crystals that, you know, some of them are so fragile that if you if you sneezed on them, it could break them. But one that Timpanogos cave is really known for is the helictite. And they are these narrow, snaking, geologic features. Cami McKinney The base of the word helictite is spiral rock helix, and they grow out from the ceiling. The walls, the floor, and they'll twist and turn up like spaghetti or calamari growing out of the walls. And and they're very unusual to see and they are definitely unusual to see in the numbers that you'll find at Timpanogos Cave. Brad Westwood So we we walked up and in so many words, up the trail, we've gone into the cave and we've been into this really enclosed space where we're examining these incredible objects. Let's take our view back out of the cave and into the valley or rather into the canyon. Tell us a little bit about the broader historical context, just a little bit about how American Fort Canyon was used. Brad Westwood It was timber harvesting, lumber mills, mining claims, even towns up there and even a railroad track. Tell us about that. Cami McKinney Sure. The American Fork Canyon that people see today is incredibly busy. But even back in the 1800s, it was a very, very busy place. And it's hard to pull out the different pieces of its history without looking at others. In the late 1800s, the first mine claims were established in the high, high elevations of American Fort Canyon. And in order to get the ore from those mines out into the valley, you know, roads started to be developed. Cami McKinney And then in the 1870s, even a railroad traveled from American Fork City. It was the steepest narrow gauge railroad at the time, and it wound its way up. American Fork Canyon. And in some of those history books, it describes the beauty of America for Canyon, but also the thrill of being on the train, imagining, hearing the the sound of the whistle blowing off and echoing off the cliffs. Cami McKinney And it's a. Brad Westwood Narrow v form canyon, isn't it? Cami McKinney It is. But then here's the crazy part. They would get up to Deer Creek City, which is a small community local located at modern day Tibble Fork. And then what they would do when you would return home is they would remove the locomotive from the front of that train and then they would just let gravity pull those train cars down and the train cars would sway and whip around the corners of the canyon as you would just fly your way out of American Fork Canyon. Cami McKinney And that was the 1870s. And so the mining continued to grow through the 1700s or the 1800s and into the early 1900s. To support it, there was this there was Deer Creek City. Modern day Tibble Fork. But even further up in elevation was Forest City. And up to a thousand people lived year round in American Fork Canyon working the mines. Cami McKinney And then and then, of course, to support all of that, you had sawmills. There was about 9 to 12 sawmills located all through the canyon, not far from modern day Mutual Dell there's a campground called Little Mill. There used to be a sawmill there. And in some of the journals, it talked about how those sawmills really changed the face of American Fork Canyon and that there was not a tree to be found in a lower American Fork Canyon and that the sawdust was so thick from these sawmills that it choked the river back and the river could not flow out of the canyon. Brad Westwood Well, and just a stone's throw from Alta. If you were to go as the crow flies over to the other mountain, you're in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Cami McKinney Well, it's not even as the crow flies. It's a few steps when you get into those that high elevation. The mine claims for American Fork Canyon were bled over from the claims at Alta it it's probably less than a mile from one those those early claims to the other side of the well but they're high 9000 feet or more. Cami McKinney Oh, it's so much work. Brad Westwood To think that there was communities there. There were. There was even a smelter processing what was mined. Cami McKinney The Sultana smelter was probably at 8000 feet. Brad Westwood Wow. And all this, of course, is gone. And so much of it has been reclaimed by nature, so to speak. At least we don't as we walk through the canyon. Now, unless you're informed in some cases you wouldn't even know there was a railroad or a town or so forth. Cami McKinney It's becoming a memory that's fading for most of most of Utahns. But if you look closely, you can still find evidence of those activities 150 years ago. Brad Westwood Wow. Next, I want to ask you about the care and protection given to this natural system of underground spaces. We're jumping to the end of one of the chapters, but tell us a story about the quick local community response in 1921 and 22 by hikers, local business people and boosters, forest rangers, academics, even railroad leaders were involved in this story in trying to preserve and care for the cave. Brad Westwood Now, we were mentioning the mining that occurred in American Fork Canyon this this story of claims has something to do with this. It triggers this designation. Tell us about that. Cami McKinney Absolutely. You know, I was mentioning about the the mining in the sawmills in American Fork Canyon, but there was also a lot of recreation going on. And in the 1921 period, there were people that were coming to hike Mt. Timpanogos and they were coming to fish in the canyon. But they were also coming to see Hansen Cave, which is the first of the three Caves on the Cave tour. Cami McKinney And for more than 30 years, people have been going into Hansen Cave and people just didn't know how to behave in in that kind of environment. There are people that had mined cave formations. People were taking souvenirs. Brad Westwood Thinking that was like Onyx or some kind of fine stone. Cami McKinney Right. Well, it looks really beautiful, but it's really brittle. And it and it really changed the face. And so in 1921, when Timpanogos Cave was finally discovered, when it was starting to become known to the forest service to the local communities, it was hard to compare this pristine environment, these amazing crystals, bright white stalactites to the the damage that had been done in Hansen Cave. Cami McKinney And it just kind of sparked with a lot of different people about how maybe their behavior should be just a little bit different. In the spring of 1922, the very first cave tours were given at Timpanogos Cave, and it didn't include the three caves that people see today, but people felt like it was a special place. Brad Westwood They need to preserve it and care for it. I mean, there was that sort of preservation ethic that sort of bubbled up locally. Cami McKinney There was and people in that just in the first few weeks, the first few months of cave tours in 1922, it was popular right away. And families and and members of the community were coming and found this place remarkable. And what the the area discovered was that there was a preexisting mine claim that overlapped the cave system. And it was a time where people didn't know that much about geology or specifically speleology. Cami McKinney And so it was a tough moment in that summer when when the mine claim owners asked the cave operation to leave. Brad Westwood And we have a prior claim. Cami McKinney We have a prior claim. You got to get out. That's let's wrap up and end these cave tours because, you know, we have a right to be here. And it was a little bit tough because at the time, you know, when they didn't understand the geology or even, you know, the dollar value of a stalactite, what they were dealing with was this preexisting thing, mining. Cami McKinney Right. Versus this. Brad Westwood Public interest. Cami McKinney This intangible beauty and and meaning and public interest. And in 1922, Warren G. Harding did create Timpanogos Cave National Monument that protected the park. Brad Westwood And it was not necessarily a federal intervention. This was this was a local community coming together, wanting to preserve and care for this treasure. Cami McKinney Absolutely. It came from members of the community in American Fork, Lehi, Pleasant Grove, Alpine, Highland, Salt Lake. And they were all kinds of people. They were farmers and educators. They were executives in all of them had found something special in the few short weeks that the caves were open for tours. Brad Westwood This is very much part of the nation's effort at protecting natural resources. You can look back 20 years before with the U.S. Forest Service and its creation in 1905, and this was a local participation. Utah congressional delegation, our delegation in Washington, the executive branch, the governor, the state legislature, they all supported, and even private landowners turned over and deeded over what was watershed areas across the Wasatch Front so we could protect the forests and the water quality. Brad Westwood Utah also wanted this cave system to be preserved. What does that say for us today is there's something we could learn about this idea of caring for things that are important to all of us. Cami McKinney I think that's a really great point that is relevant today because, you know, we're we're looking at these places that are that are pretty or places that tell a story and and how those stories perpetuate from generation to generation that not everybody is going to fall in love with it. But it does have a greater ability to influence the people of Utah. Cami McKinney The people wasatch front, the people of the United States. And, you know, even if even if you don't like caves, you don't like dark places and you don't like, you know, you're claustrophobic. Maybe you never want to come to Timpanogos Cave. But the one thing people can be grateful for is that caves and karst systems, which are geologic landforms that have caves, hold 25% of the United States groundwater. Cami McKinney And that is a protection that we all need and we all benefit from. Brad Westwood Wow, I didn't know that. So in a sense, those aquifers are kind of like what we're seeing in the mountains of American Fork Canyon. Cami McKinney Absolutely. Brad Westwood Where you place the park in an international and national context and significance. Also, I note that Utah's Timpanogos Cave has a sister cave in Kentucky that's very famous Mammoth Cave, and it was designated in 1990 as a unesco's World Heritage site as an international biosphere reserve. Tell me, in relationship to these other caves, just where does Timp fit in? Cami McKinney Timp fits in because it's different on its own. Within than the United States National Park Service there are a lot of different cave system. Mammoth cave is remarkable. Do you know it is 420 miles long? Well, this year they're celebrating their 50th anniversary of discovering the connection between Mammoth Cave and the Flint Ridge system, which added like a hundred miles or more. Cami McKinney It's unbelievable that you could spend days underground and Mammoth Cave is completely different than Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. These vast, enormous speleothems are going to keep working this word in even Carlsbad and Mammoth Cave don't compared to wind cave and jewel cave and Timpanogos even though you're looking at one mile of passage and only a third mile on your cave tour, it sits alone in the types of speleothems, those cave formations, the helictites, the colors, and even even the speleogenesis of how the cave system was created is unique to caves in the United States. Brad Westwood What geological, thermal and other physical forces that came together to create this great underground cave. Cami McKinney So one of the really difficult terms that we like to use is hypogenic speleogenesis. So I'm just going to start by overwhelming you with that. But it didn't happen overnight. It didn't even happen over 100,000 years. It started with the creation in of of the limestone. And the limestone began around the equator where Marine life were layering and the earth was shifting. Cami McKinney And those marine life built up and squished all together to create the limestone. And as that as the land was shifting into where we understand Utah to be now. And this started squishing all that rock together and pushing up the Rocky Mountains and the Wasatch Front. It started fracturing and creating cracks. And, you know, a million years ago, you didn't have to hike to Timpanogos Cave because it was actually under the water table. Cami McKinney And somewhere that rock crossed over some, you know, geothermal space, hot springs and the cold groundwater. We're starting to get jets of hot water. And that is what started eating away at the rock. And a lot of people start thinking here in Utah, we we immediately go to Lake Bonneville. This is way before Lake Bonneville. By the time Lake Bonneville was here, Timpanogos Cave was like lakeside property, where you could stand at the cave entrance and look out Lake Bonneville, you know, maybe, you know, cast a pole out there and start fishing in the water. Cami McKinney But as the mountains started pushing up, it pulled the hole the speleogenesis, it pulled the hole above the water table, and Mt. Timpanogos continued to climb and elevate that hole. And it was at that point, as the water was draining out, that the drips were able to start coming in, and with each drip it left a little minerals and a little minerals. Cami McKinney Until now, you have these remarkable cave formations. Brad Westwood This amazing geological book of time, isn't it? Cami McKinney It just is. I hope that wasn't too much. Brad Westwood I didn't know. I think I think our listeners can come along with that very well. Where you've been listening to the podcast, speak your piece, where we invite writers and historians and contributors to Utah's history to share their insights and discoveries. My guest today is National Park Service Ranger Cami McKinney, and we're speaking about the 100th anniversary and the history of Timpanogos Caves in American Fork Canyon in Utah County in the state of Utah. Brad Westwood We hope you'll stay with us for the second half of speak. Your piece. Cami, just one other statement. You said, as we were in the break about this geothermal hypothesis about Timpanogos in relationship to other sites in Utah. Will you tell us about that? Cami McKinney Sure. Again, it's just a hypothesis, but the Deseret Limestone that the caves were developed in is when it's in cold water. Rock, like that is inactive. The water doesn't have a lot of power against it. But as we look at the state of Utah, we can kind of there's some clues that may have contributed to the hypogenic theory where where we have these warm thermal waters. Cami McKinney And you can start to connect the line from different warm springs in the state of Utah, from the crater in Midway, the Warm Springs at Saratoga Springs, and even those further into the Great Basin and Timpanogos Cave seems. Brad Westwood To follow that. Cami McKinney Line. It's not far out from that line and there's a chance that maybe those were contributing factors into bringing some heat into the water. In that water, the hot water that mixes with cold water suddenly becomes really active at dissolution and together that mixing and can start to dissolve the limestone and open up the hole of the cave. Brad Westwood Yeah. Which then it has millions of years of dripping and and water each season coming into the cave. Cami McKinney Yeah. Some geologists actually when they go to caves they don't want, they don't want to see the speleothems because it covers up the speleogenesis They can't see the rocks because they're stalactites in the way. Brad Westwood Interesting. Well, let's talk about the natural and cultural resources beyond the cave again. Let's kind of go outside into the canyon. What do what do you all know about Native American features? Speak about those who lived here before we white settlers came to the area. Cami McKinney Oh, this was a very, very busy place to be. Long before the Mormon pioneers reached the Wasatch Front. And one of the things I like to show people is if you look at the early maps created by Father Escalante and Dominguez, they actually drew a map of Utah Valley. And in that map, it shows communities and villages that completely surround Utah Lake showing that this was a remarkable place with special resources. Cami McKinney A lot of archeologists have identified that American Fork Canyon was an important resource for hunting and tool building, and they've identified that, you know, the ancestral yurts, Paiutes, Goshutes. even the Shoshone we're using American for Canyon. And in Utah Valley they spend their winters around Utah Lake utilizing the abundant fishery there. They would move up American Fort Canyon and Provo Canyon in the spring. Cami McKinney They would build tools, they would start hunting. And then by the time it got hot and crazy in the valley, they were up at Strawberry and enjoying those high elevations and cool temperatures. Brad Westwood And that nomadic life. I mean, the thing that most Utahns are not aware is there was a stunningly complicated and rich culture existing here before we came. Cami McKinney Absolutely. And I don't know that it's necessarily any more nomadic than than a snowbird. You know, I'm going to head to Pheonix for the winter and I'm going to go to a cooler temperatures for the summer. And that's what they were doing is they just kind of kept circling Mount Timpanogos, utilizing resources when they were at their best and when it was the most reasonable to live. Cami McKinney There's there is a small amount of evidence and rock art in American Fork Canyon. It's small and hard to find, but there's a lot of evidence that people were not only hunting and gathering, but enjoying and playing games and and just appreciating American Fork Canyon and community. Brad Westwood You know, the thing I constantly appreciate is, is the more you dig, the more you understand. There it was 13,000 plus years of human activity in Utah. And I think you could just about you cannot find a square, 20 mile area that doesn't have some evidence of a previous culture. Cami McKinney Absolutely. American Fork Canyon has been popular for a long, long time. Brad Westwood Very long time. Cami McKinney 13,000 years or more. Brad Westwood So, Cami, will you tell us the multigenerational story now? We're coming to the discovery story or the rediscovery, the names, the groups which led to that 1922 designation of protection. Will you include a few harrowing stories? Spelunking, roping, ladders, falls, rescues that happened leading to the creation of the of the park. Cami McKinney Absolutely. You know, people complain about hiking the trail now. It's so steep. It's so hot. It's so hard. But in 1887, Martin Hanson because of likely because of the sawmills in the canyon, in order to get timber, you had to really work for it and you had to really get up the slopes. And because he was high the slopes, he discovered Timpanogos Cave or Hanson Cave in 1887, in his first cave tours, he did not make it comfortable for anybody. Cami McKinney So in order to go on one of his cave tours in the late 1800s, he just chopped down trees and lashed them to the cliff. And you would go up this really steep trail and you hit the cliff face. There was a tree and you climb the branches and so you climb these tree ladders in order to get the cave people came and and then once you got there, you were crawling back into the darkness with candlelight. Cami McKinney And I hope a drip of water doesn't hit your candle because you might find yourself in a lot of trouble. Brad Westwood Wow. And Mr. Hanson eventually didn't he have another part of the story later on with another cave? Cami McKinney He did. So I think it got in his is the blood of his family. The Hanson family loved the story and the their connection with the discovery of Hanson Cave in in 1921, his son and grandson were hunting in American for Canyon. And this was right at the beginning of when the Forest Service and the local support groups were helping to build a trail better than Martin Hanson's, but still worse than the one we had today. Cami McKinney And they stood opposite of the canyon and they could see where this trail was going. They could see Hansen’s cave and they found a hole and they hiked all the way down and back up and they found a hole where you just took a few steps in and then it fell away into darkness and just a drop off. Cami McKinney And what they discovered was Middle Cave. It's now the the second portion of your cave tour. But in order to visit Middle Cave in those early days, not only were you going up these really awful, steep cliffs, but it was 110 foot rappel down into the darkness. Brad Westwood And wow. Cami McKinney They didn't have the harnesses and the amazing rappelling equipment. So you would wrap that rope around your waist and you would slide down and hope you didn't burn your hands all the way down. And then you would explore a 43 degree cave and try not to fall into the water. And at the end of your exploration, you needed to save enough energy to climb hand over, hand up the rope in order to get out. Cami McKinney And there was a few places where it was just narrow enough where you could spread eagle your legs and allow your arms to rest. Brad Westwood On your face. Cami McKinney In the right place. Just in this narrow, narrow, narrow cave passage. And those. Brad Westwood In the darkness. Cami McKinney In the dark. Brad Westwood Darkness. Cami McKinney And, you know, you'd probably have to put your candle out because you couldn't be holding it or maybe you melted it on to the brim of your hat. Brad Westwood And what happened? Isn't there one person who took a fall? There was about. Cami McKinney That. There is everyone is always looking for a ghost story and we don't really have one. But the story of Leo Thorn is pretty remarkable. This Hansen family brought a group on this second exploration trip into Middle Cave, and Leo Thorn worked at the the sugar beet factory in Lehi, which is near, you know, where modern target is today. Cami McKinney And he did a midnight shift and then he rode his bike from the factory up American Fork Canyon, climb the steep cliffs, rappelled down the stupid rope into the darkness, explored the cave. And then as the family was leaving for the day, he climbed hand over, hand, climb up the slope. And as they reached down to give him a hand up and out, he fainted and fell 100 feet back down onto the ground. Brad Westwood Into the darkness. Cami McKinney Into the darkness. And there was no question that he was dead. And they sent the youngest member to go get the doctor and to get some help. They tied a rope around him and pulled him out and he woke up and walked down. He didn't break a single bone. Brad Westwood But he did have a few scars he lived the rest of his life with. Cami McKinney He sure did. I don't I my guess is he was a lot more cautious after that. Brad Westwood Wow. Well, now let's talk about the rediscovery. I mean, sometimes people found these things. They covered him up. They kind of wanted to keep it on the quiet. And who were the other people involved in the discovery part of the story? Cami McKinney Absolutely. So in 19 about 1913, there was two families that went to Hansen Cave, and Martin Hansen had long since abandoned his tour operation. But the cave was still there. And while they were there, they had teenage boys who did what teenage boys do and didn't mind and didn't behave and climbed up cliffs and they got stuck. And James Gough and Frank Johnson from Lehi were stuck on ledges above the cave. Cami McKinney And as they tried to figure out their way down, they were shimmying down these slopes untill they found cold air blowing into their face and they found another small hole. And as they slid in, what they had discovered was Timpanogos Cave. And initially they took it, they took their families, they took a few people, friends through, but they actually buried the entrance. Cami McKinney And for some reason, around 1915, 1916, they never came back. And the rumors of this cave had gotten out because a few people had gone, but nobody knew where it was. Brad Westwood You know, I want to stop and say that you're going to we're going to put a link to Cami’s book. It's called Heart of the Mountain The History of Timpanogos Cave. And these harrowing, harrowing stories are included in this book. So I want to stop and say, if you're interested, we'll have a link in the show notes. Cami McKinney Well, because they had because the entrance had been covered up, there was just a rumor of something beautiful and remarkable. And so 1921, a group of college kids hiking Mt. Timpanogos decided that they were going to find the secret cave, and they started by going to the cave expert, which was Martin Hansen. And Martin recommended that they look somewhere near Hansen Cave. Cami McKinney They look at the same elevation, and that's what they did. They started at Hansen Cave and this this group of friends spread out over the this awful steep mountain. But it was exactly what it was needed to rediscover. Timpanogos Cave. Brad Westwood And this was a hiking club, a very popular part of 20th century young culture, was this idea of getting out to nature. And these were men and women. Cami McKinney Absolutely. They they were participating in the rise in popularity of the annual Mt. Timpanogos hike. It began in the 19 teens and moved on into about 1960, where hundreds and thousands of people were all hiking to the peak of Mt. Timpanogos in a single day. And it was on that hike one day that they said, Let's find this. Cami McKinney And they realized right away that they had found something remarkable. Brad Westwood And to their way of thinking, they had kind of discovered it. I mean, the one thing I noticed in your history is there's discovery and then rediscovery and, you know, lots of different claims about who found what. And you work through all those stories in your book. Cami McKinney Each one has its value. The first person that stepped in isn't necessarily the person that makes it meaningful. And so the work, the discovery that was done by James Gough and Friends Johnson is valid and and they got things started and because of their discovery the rumor was pervasive in the area and Vera Manwelland and the Payson Alpine Club. Cami McKinney What they found later because of that rumor also is important to the story. Brad Westwood Interesting. Well, will you talk about the special use permit? I mean, one thing that's interesting in the story is there's a lot of local involvement and local money involved in preserving and making the caves accessible. Will you talk about that period where both the Forest Service, rather the National Park Service and the locals helped in doing this story and making it available to the public? Cami McKinney Well, you're absolutely right. It was actually the U.S. Forest Service in the very beginning, the Forest Service, a multi-use agency. And when we look at what American Fork Canyon looked like in the 1920s, there's still the existence of sawmills. There was hunting, there was mining, there was grazing all happening in this area. And that was really their expertise at the time, is trying to manage for all of these uses. Cami McKinney And the Forest Service employees at the time who were also locals, they realized that these discoveries were remarkable and important, but they had no capacity to do anything towards protecting them or providing a tour operation. And so they went to the experts and they went down into American Fork in Utah Valley, and they reached out to it was called the American Fork Commercial Club. Cami McKinney And it was a variety of businessmen. They owned the local mercantile. They were the bank manager. They were on the Alpine School District School Board, and it ended up forming this group called them the Timpanogos Outdoor Committee, the Timpanogos Cave Committee. And these these men were committed to protecting the caves. They were committed to the tour operations. And in the end, they served as volunteers, both with the National Forest Service in the beginning and then later in the National Park Service. Cami McKinney And they served as volunteers from 1922 to 1946, just committed to Timpanogos Cave. Brad Westwood And they also did they electrify the the caves and built the built the one of the trails. I mean, there's some real local involvement. Cami McKinney They did they were they were fundraising there. They were they were selling calendars that help install lighting systems. They were knocking on doors. And so it may have, you know, the origin of the in the organization was was this Timpanogos Cave Committee. But they were getting all of the community involved in in in developing the cave for cave tours and its perpetual motion for the decades after. Brad Westwood So I know this group also loved good stories. I mean, so many kind of wonderful legends, sort of evolved during this period related to Timpanogos and the caves. And tell us a few of these yarns and let's get to the real facts of if they exist or not. Cami McKinney So I mentioned earlier that the annual Mt. Timpanogos hike began in the 19 teens, and the sponsor of that event was Eugene Roberts, who became known as Timp Roberts. And the first few years it was just a dozen, then a couple dozen, then a couple hundred. And it was just this event that grew and grew and grew. And what people would do is you would catch the train in Provo, you would ride the train up Provo Canyon to Wildwood, and you would get off the train and you would take a horse and buggy up to Aspen Grove. Cami McKinney And the night before the hike, everyone would tell stories and sing songs and do skits like lots of people do camping today. And in that event, Timp Roberts came up with this legend that began telling a story about the native people. And there's various iterations that include somebody jumping off the mountain. And we're a couple that fell in love. Cami McKinney And the story has evolved and changed over the years. But its origin is this BYU professor, and the story began before the caves were rediscovered. And in those first years of the cave tours where no one knew a whole lot about spelelogy your cave tour consisted of “This looks like...â€, fill in the blank, this looks like a mouse, and this looks like a heart. Cami McKinney And so suddenly they've integrated this BYU legend to include a large stalactite in the cave that became the heart of Timpanogos. But it's it's not attributed to the native people. It's attributed to Eugene Roberts. Brad Westwood But it to me, it's a fascinating part of how we understand and see and explain nature. And this is part of these legends everywhere. Cami McKinney Absolutely. I just I one of the things I really love is is the legends that that come from our Associated Tribes. And I was speaking to one of the tribe creation story that the gods raked their fingers across the land and created these steep, deep canyons like American Fork Canyon. And that is something I can really embrace and visualize. Cami McKinney And, and and I love thinking about how they interpreted the land. And and I appreciate that the time period in which Eugene Roberts was creating these stories, it seems very indicative of the 1920s, as I know it does. Brad Westwood It does. It really does. Well. Well, you speak about let's let's talk about the people who, for now, 100 years or more have cared for, protected, interpreted. Let's talk about people specifically that are part of this story. Cami McKinney Absolutely. There's been some remarkable individuals that have committed themselves to Timpanogos cave, fallen in love with it one way or another. I think the very first one is Thomas Walker. He was just a young man that came to work and give cave tours in 1926. And I don't know if he just fell in love with the formations or the darkness, but he ended up staying and becoming a tour guide. Cami McKinney The custodian, the cave keeper, they called him. And he he worked there until 1969 when he retired. And most of the infrastructure, the trail that we walk is here because of him. Some of the buildings in the park even now are there because of him. He built them. He created them. And and there's not a whole lot in the park that he didn't have a hand in making it happen. Cami McKinney But I also think about there's this family that we now are on our fourth generation of Ranger Arlo Shelly came to work at Timpanogos Cave decades ago and he worked giving cave tours for 57 seasons. Wow. And now his son is on his 35th, 36th year at Timpanogos Cave. And there have been there was the grandfather, the son, his children. Cami McKinney And now their grandchildren. Four great generations, four generations. And they're all there, each one coming, perhaps because of their family tradition. But they also each have created their own relationship and meaningful, meaningful time in their contributions to the park. Brad Westwood Tell us about your mom. She's part of that story, too, you know. Cami McKinney Oh, goodness, of course, my mother, she loved Timpanogos Cave and she loved the history of Timpanogos Cave and American Fork Canyon. And it was important for her to make sure that each person could find meaning in what she found and create their own meaningful experiences there. And I guess it bled into me. And, you know, I'm at 25, 26 years now. Cami McKinney And and I just every once in a while imagine something else. But I am grateful for the experiences I've had at Timpanogos cave and it's important to me. Brad Westwood Well I, I love the trail. You know you mentioned the trail is a big part of it. You got to hike up. But there's these wonderful rock walls and the views are spectacular. You make your way to the cave. Everyone who I've been involved with who have led tours have been just so fun and informative and really kind of engage families and individuals. Brad Westwood What are some of the programing that you're doing now for the park? Cami McKinney Well, I think a lot of us see headlines about how busy national parks are and Timpanogos Cave is no different, but it feels a little different because we have a limited number of cave tour tickets. In 1991, we opened a new visitor center after our other one was lost to a fire in back in the nineties and one of our goals with this visitor center was to allow people that whether because they physically couldn't hike the trail, they couldn't get a ticket or they came in the winter that they could appreciate why Timpanogos Cave is unique and understand its its geology and its history through the Visitor Center. Cami McKinney This is the time of year. It's incredible. We have so many field trips and so many kids are coming right now. And and we're fortunate that learning about caves is part of fourth and fifth grade curriculum because we have lots and lots of happy children screaming their way with the mountain and laughing their way all the way down. Cami McKinney But one of the other things that we have, it's, you know, there's a lot more to the park and to American for Canyon than just the caves. A few years ago, we were lucky enough to earn an urban night sky designation and we do not have a perfect night sky with our proximity to the valley. But we have enough that our star parties that we offer every year are really popular, that you can come into the canyon and see the stars, see the constellations, see planets, and there they're an incredible program. Cami McKinney But the one of the other really cool things that we've done is we actually do we go into classrooms both physically and virtually, and we have now been in classrooms in every state in the United States where a ranger can virtually take the cave with them. We have a 3-D laser scan of the cave, and the Ranger takes that. Cami McKinney And and they can patch into these classrooms and share the caves with kids all over the country. They learn about caves in general and specifically about Timpanogos and why why Timpanogos is meaningful even if you're in Maine or Florida or Hawaii. Brad Westwood You can enjoy this. And I know from the digital experiences I've had is it just makes me want to see the real thing. Cami McKinney Absolutely. But it's also a learning platform that's really that really engages younger people because that's where they live. Wow. They got to come, though. There's something about the darkness and the smell of the cave. Like without the stalactites, without the stories. There's something about being underground that just lets you know you're in a different world. Brad Westwood This is wonderful. Well, this is the hundredth anniversary of this of this wonderful federal Reserve, this monument. We hope you will come to it this fall until it closes on October. Cami McKinney 16th. Brad Westwood And then thereafter in the spring. And we highly recommend this wonderful location to you and your family. Please remember to rate and review, speak your piece on Apple Google Podcast or wherever you find your podcast. If you're not already a subscriber, I recommend that you subscribe to the Utah Historical Quarterly. This is a magazine about the history of Utah all groups, all areas of the state. Brad Westwood Any place you live, you will find materials in the Utah Historical Quarterly about where you live. We hope you will support state history by becoming a member of the State Historical Society. It is also working towards plans of the Museum of Utah, which will hopefully open in the anniversary at the anniversary of our nation in 2026. Go to history Utah dot gov Utah State Historical Society to subscribe today now. Brad Westwood Cami, thank you. One last words you'd like to share about this remarkable place you work. Cami McKinney It just I'm I'm grateful to be here. And I hope people take the opportunity to explore their national parks and particularly come to Timpanogos and find this this amazing, unique place. Brad Westwood Thank you, Cami. This podcast was recorded and engineered at the studio at Utah State Library, one of the statewide educational programs that brings you the Utah Bookmobile, a library for the blind and assists every public library and program across Utah. I thank my sound engineer and post-production editor Jason Te Powers Audio Recording Manager extraordinaire here at the Utah State Library. Brad Westwood Speak Speaker Peace is a podcast where writers, historians, archeologists, curators and more share their insights and discoveries about Utah's history. If there's one place, one podcast to get your Utah history fix, I hope this is the place. Thank you, Cami McKinney, for joining me today. Thanks to all of you who are listening. I hope you'll once again tune in to the next episode of Speak Your Peace.
Next month on October 14, 2022 Utah’s Timpanogos Cave–which actually includes three linked caves-–will celebrate its 100th anniversary as a protected national monument. It was in 1922 that US President Warren G. Harding signed Proclamation No. 15040, under the authority of the American Antiquities Act of 1906, to protect the caves for their “unusual scientific interest and importance.”