Western Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave is the longest known cave on Earth, with over 412 miles of passages currently explored & mapped, as of fall 2017. The name “Mammoth Cave” does not refer to its world-record length, nor to the early discovery of mammoth or mastodon fossils here (actually, fossil proboscidean skeletal remains have been reported from this locality). Rather, the name refers to the immense size of many of the rooms and passages.

It is not certain exactly when Mammoth Cave was discovered. A story about its 1797 discovery by a man named Houchins (or Hutchins) is fictional - the park service knows this, but still tells the story during cave tours. However, Mammoth Cave’s earliest acknowledgement in available historical records dates to 1797.

Early tourists often left their names on passage walls or ceilings. This practice (= vandalism) continued well after the area became a park. Methods of leaving a signature included making scratches on the rock and using candle smoke on ceilings to leave a series of stains. The oldest known dated signature in Mammoth Cave is a 1798 scratch signature in Ganter Avenue. The oldest dated signature I've seen is 1811.

Shown above is a smoke-outlined human profile in Gothic Avenue. This cave passage fascinates me, and yet it has been intensely vandalized - distressingly so. It could be characterized the same way as Michaelangelo's famous "Last Judgment" - a wrecked masterpiece (<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Last_Judgement_(Michelangelo).jpg/1200px-Last_Judgement_(Michelangelo).jpg" rel="nofollow">upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Last_Ju...</a>).

Smoke signatures are abundant on the ceiling of Gothic Avenue. 1800s-era tourists were often encouraged to dab the near-white limestone ceiling with candle smoke. Lit candles tied onto sticks were raised toward the ceiling. The smoke left a subcircular soot mark. To prevent hot candle wax from dripping down onto one's face, a mirror was placed on the cave floor and individuals would use that to watch their progress. This accounts for the frequently-seen reversed letters and numbers in Gothic Avenue's smoke signatures.

In addition to signatures, a couple human head drawings are present. Shown above is the most prominent one - it was probably made in the 1830s, based on dates in surrounding graffiti. It's been suspected that this ceiling "artwork" was made by illuminating a real person's head, such that a shadow appeared on the cave ceiling. Candle smoke dabbing followed the edges of the shadow. One can only speculate about the identity of the person, but Stephen Bishop's signature is just to the left of this figure. Stephen Bishop is the most famous cave guide in Mammoth Cave history (<a href="https://www.nps.gov/maca/learn/historyculture/images/Stephen_Bishop_CMS_1.jpg" rel="nofollow">www.nps.gov/maca/learn/historyculture/images/Stephen_Bish...</a>). He conducted numerous cave tours in the 1830s to 1850s. Stephen is buried in the cave guide cemetery near the visitor center.