“The people [in the region] were pretty poor farmers,” says David Randolph Kem, author of The Kentucky Cave Wars: The Century That Shaped Mammoth Cave National Park. “By the time the early 20th century came along, they [had found] most of the resources and caves in the area. The wealthy people who were traveling to see Mammoth Cave provided an opportunity that [locals] otherwise would not have. There was a whole lot more money to be made in the tourism industry than there was … in pretty much any other part of life. There was so much competition that if you weren’t willing to go above and beyond, you really wouldn’t stand a chance [at being] successful.”
Summarizing the cutthroat environment for the Chicago Tribune in 1925, reporter Tom Killian wrote, “Every boy growing up knows that it’s either a case of going out among the ‘furriners,’ getting a job as a cave guide or, best of all, discovering a cave for himself.” Ultimately, the goal was to “settle down and ‘hustle’ tourists, a local expression.”
Some cappers threw rocks when tourists approached a rival caver, or they masqueraded as fellow tourists who had just learned that Mammoth Cave was too filled with kerosene smoke to enjoy. Another tactic was telling tourists that all the caves were connected, so no matter which one they entered through, the experience would be identical.
Tensions between cave operators could turn deadly. As the Richmond Daily Register reported in 1921, an argument broke out after Len Ferguson, Mammoth Cave’s 30-year-old postmaster, informed Clell Lee, a 26-year-old associated with the Great Onyx Cave, that “there was no mail for him.” (Another account reported that both men were “engaged in the taxicab business.”) Ferguson shot Lee twice in the back, killing him instantly. The violence, according to the Register, was “said to have been an outgrowth of rivalry between employees” at the two tourist attractions.
Other business battles were fought in court. In the early 1920s, George Morrison, a former oilman, tried to steal business from Mammoth Cave by opening an alternative entrance. He illegally surveyed the surrounding area in hopes of finding a passageway to the cave system beyond the bounds of the land owned by the Mammoth Cave Estate. In 1921, he blasted a sinkhole on a neighboring property, then sent a crew to explore the caverns below. The search effort was successful, and Morrison opened his “New Entrance to Mammoth Cave” the following spring.