Blue Spring Cave facts for kids
Blue Spring Cave is an amazing cave located in White County, Tennessee. It's found on the north side of Blue Spring Cove. This cave is super long! It's the 2nd longest cave in Tennessee and the 10th longest in the whole United States.
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Discovering More of the Cave
For a long time, people only knew about a small part of Blue Spring Cave. As recently as 1989, explorers had only mapped about 500 feet of it.
But that year, something exciting happened! A group of cavers (people who explore caves) found a small hole with air blowing out of it. They made the hole bigger and dropped into a huge passage. They named this new part "Johnson Avenue" to honor the family who owned the land.
The Carr Entrance
In 2001, another big step was taken. Workers dug a second, man-made entrance to the cave. This new entry is called the Carr Entrance, named after the family who owns that land.
This new entrance is really helpful. It lets cavers go straight into Johnson Avenue. This means they don't have to squeeze through the tight, old passage that connected the first 500 feet of the cave to the newer discoveries. This new entrance is kept safe with a special gate. You can only enter with permission.
How Long is Blue Spring Cave?
The length of Blue Spring Cave has grown a lot over the years as more of it has been explored.
On October 2, 2010, cave divers made an incredible discovery. They connected Blue Spring Cave to another underwater passage called Blue Spring Resurgence. This connection made the cave's mapped length a huge 36.42 miles! This discovery made Blue Spring Cave the 9th longest mapped cave in the United States at that time.
By February 11, 2012, even more of the cave had been explored. The surveyed length of Blue Spring Cave grew to an amazing 38.4 miles! This new length was announced by Bill Walter at a special meeting for cave explorers.
Ancient Animal Footprints
Blue Spring Cave is one of several caves in Tennessee where scientists have found very old animal footprints. These footprints belong to Ice Age jaguars. These jaguars were much bigger than the ones we see today!
The ancient jaguars (called Panthera onca augusta) weighed about 450 to 500 pounds. Modern jaguars usually weigh around 200 to 225 pounds. Imagine seeing a jaguar that big!
Bill Walter first noticed these jaguar footprints in Blue Spring Cave in 1990. But he didn't realize how old or important they were at the time. More jaguar footprints were found by Hal Love on November 15, 2003. It was then that experts understood how old and significant these tracks truly were.
These ancient tracks are not near any of the cave's current entrances. Scientists think the jaguars probably entered through a different cave opening that has since collapsed over time.
