Edmunds Central students visit the Great Smoky Mountains. Much of the Smoky Mountains were heavily deforested during the 18th and 19th centuries for timber but have since recovered with new growth forest.
Edmunds Central students traverse Lost River Cave by boat to explore the formations carved by a river that appears and disappears back into a thick layer of limestone beneath the City of Bowling Green, Kentucky.
by Spencer Cody
Edmunds Central Science teacher
Twelve Edmunds Central students and two teachers spent August 7-14 learning about the caves of Tennessee and Kentucky and the Great Smokey Mountains.
This was a "dry run" of a professional geology field trip to be run in October sponsored by the Geological Society of America.
After two days of transit, students started their first day of cave exploration deep inside Lookout Mountain that towers above Chattanooga, Tennessee, to see the tallest and deepest underground waterfall in the United States, Ruby Falls. They then continued up into the foothills of the Smoky Mountains to explore the Craighead Caverns cave system to see The Lost Sea, America's largest underground lake. The final stop of the day took us to Tuckaleechee Caverns below Smoky Mountains National Park with its remarkable stadium-size "Big Room" of formations.
Following a day of touring caves in East Tennessee, the science group explored Great Smoky Mountains National Park in East Tennessee and North Carolina.
After our visit to the Great Smoky Mountains, we headed up to Kentucky to continue our cave exploration by visiting five more caves in the Mammoth Cave area of Central Kentucky: Crystal Onyx Cave, Mammoth Onyx Cave, Great Onyx Cave, Lost River Cave, and Mammoth Cave. Crystal Onyx and Mammoth Onyx Caves are both relatively small caves but each had a variety of very nice cave formations on display. The Great Onyx Cave is within Mammoth Cave National Park, and dye testing indicates that it is connected to Mammoth Cave; however, it is currently considered its own separate cave until further exploration changes that designation by finding passageways that connect the two.
Lost River Cave in Bowling Green, Kentucky, had the unique feature of a river that appears from limestone only to disappear back into the limestone. In order to explore the cave, the science group had to enter the cave via boat and squeeze under a fairly tight ceiling. The science group's visit to Mammoth Cave capped off the entire experience. Mammoth Cave is, indeed, mammoth as the longest mapped cave in the world with its towering large caverns. The science group took the Grand Historic tour of Mammoth Cave that focused on the cave's rich history of everything from serving as a saltpeter mine to a tuberculosis colony.
If interested in participating in the professional field trip coming up on October 12-14, visit the GSA Connects 2023 website for more details on field trip 401: Underground Treasures: Exploring the Stunning Caves of Kentucky and Tennessee. Or, contact Spencer Cody, the field trip leader at [email protected]. Space is limited, and prices go up after the September 13 early registration deadline.
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