By Stephen Smoot
Speleology. It’s not a term that most people toss around in their daily lives. The Pendleton County Historical Society, however, brought a large crowd to historic Circleville High School to learn more about the topic, which is the study and exploration of caves.
Guest speaker George Dasher informed the attendees that “West Virginia is a cave state.” Although Missouri claimed that nickname in 2017, the Mountain State has the third highest number of long caves in the United States with 127, behind Tennessee and Kentucky. He also shared that Pendleton County has the third highest number of caves in West Virginia, totaling 595 identified and documented, after Greenbrier and Randolph counties.
Dasher concluded that “West Virginia and Pendleton County are prime areas for people to go caving.”
As an expert in the field, Dasher has spent almost a half century studying and exploring caves and cave systems. He is a fellow of the National Speleological Society and the West Virginia Speleological Society and is a geologist recently retired from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.
“We owe our topography to Africa,” Dasher explained, adding that what became the North American continent collided with Africa on three separate occasions. While the gradual violence of plate tectonics formed the mountains, ridges, and anticlines that dominate the Pendleton County landscape, it is water’s effect on the native sandstone and limestone that creates both the spectacular rock formations and winding caves in the area.
Pendleton County caves have stories to tell that date back many millions of years before humans appeared on the earth. The bones of Ice Age mammals, such as saber-toothed tigers and mastodons, found their way deep into the ground. New Trout cave has the northernmost location of vampire bat remains as well.
Indians of the Seneca Nation, one of the Five Nations of the Iroquois League, used caves in the area for their purposes. One of the first frontiersmen to discover and explore caves in what became Pendleton County was Bishop Francis Asbury of the Methodist Church. He described caves he saw as “solemn, and awfully grand. There were parts we did not explore – so deep, so damp, and so near night. I came away filled with wonder.”
Early American munitions makers also prized area caves which held substantial deposits of saltpeter, an important component in making black powder. Twenty such cave/mines have been identified in Pendleton County, but records for many are poor or non-existent. Materials mined from Pendleton County helped to produce black powder for over a century, starting with the French and Indian War and, with a few exceptions, ending with the American Civil War.
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, those with interest in science, adventure, and profit took the most interest in the caves. Dasher described how Reverend Professor Arthur Krause of St. John’s Academy in Petersburg organized expeditions to study Hellhole, one of the most dangerous caves in the area.
Organizations such as the District of Columbia Speleological Society and others explored the caves, mapped them, and noted their interesting characteristics. They discovered fossils and formations, and developed even more precise maps of the world beneath Pendleton County.
The presentation’s final slide contained three vital pieces of advice for cave enthusiasts so that the careful work of millions of years of natural processes can be enjoyed for generations to come. “Take nothing but pictures. Kill nothing but time. Leave nothing but footprints.”
The event opened with a short business meeting led by Paul Clayton. He reminded the group that “the mission of the historical society is to record the history of the county,” then introduced the board members. Clayton followed by stating that “the historical society subsists on donations and sales of books.”
He then showed some of the books available for sale, including Brenna Mitchell’s well-researched Boys of ’17, a volume about Pendleton County soldiers in World War I and the society’s book containing data from the county’s approximately 800 cemeteries. A 2023 edition with updated information is available for sale.
The next public meeting and presentation will take place on Oct. 15 at the old Presbyterian Church in Upper Tract. The topic will be Pendleton County and the Civil War.
