Journey to the Bottomless Pit: The Story of Stephen Bishop & Mammoth Cave
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About this ebook
“A fascinating story.” —LeVar Burton
The thrilling adventures of a slave who became known worldwide for his explorations of Mammoth Cave.If you toured Mammoth Cave in Kentucky in the year 1838, you would have been led by candlelight through dark, winding tunnels to the edge of a terrifying bottomless pit. Your guide would have been seventeen-year-old Stephen Bishop, an African American slave who became known around the world for his knowledge of Mammoth Cave.
Bishop needed bravery, intelligence, and curiosity to explore the vast cavern. Using only a lantern, rope, and other basic caving equipment, he found a way to cross the bottomless pit and discover many more miles of incredible grottoes and tunnels. For the rest of his life he guided visitors through the cave, showing them how to stoop, bend, and crawl through passageways that were sometimes far from the traditional tour route.
Based on the narratives of those who toured the cave with him, Journey to the Bottomless Pit is the first book for young readers ever written about Stephen Bishop. New to this edition: A free teacher’s guide to this book, as well as an interview with current-day Mammoth Cave guide Jerry Bransford, great-great-grandson of Stephen Bishop’s fellow guide, Mat Bransford.
Elizabeth Mitchell
A Florida native, she writes fantasy fiction and bits of realism while using her creativity and imagination to dream up and pursue new works of art. When she's not writing, Elizabeth enjoys Target runs, non-essential drives to get coffee, and peace and quiet while listening to music. Her other talents include juggling a houseful of kids and a husband of 8 years, stumbling over her own words, loving a huge black lab, suffering from RBF, unintentionally coming off as abrasive, and running late to everything. Elizabeth is currently working on her next novel, the sequel to The Deceivers.
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Journey to the Bottomless Pit - Elizabeth Mitchell
PRAISE FOR
JOURNEY TO THE BOTTOMLESS PIT
Nominated for the Louisiana Young Readers’ Choice Award, the Young Hoosier Book Award, and the Volunteer State Book Award
A well-told and riveting story of underground exploration . . . the extraordinary tale of a man who rises above his imposed station in life to find his true calling.
—National Speleological Society News
The thrilling setting is the focus of this novel about Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, which Mitchell shapes around the astonishing biography of Stephen Bishop.
—Booklist
Would make for great reading before or after a visit to Mammoth Cave, but also has broader appeal as a human-interest story.
—School Library Journal
Takes readers on a tour unlike anything they’ve experienced.
—Metro Parent Magazine
Journey to the Bottomless Pit
The Story of Stephen Bishop & Mammoth Cave
Elizabeth Mitchell
Illustrations by Kelynn Z. Alder
To my grandfather,
John L. Mitchell,
who first took me to Mammoth Cave
mapCONTENTS
How I Wrote This Book: A Note to Readers
Chapter 1: The New Guide
Chapter 2: The Church and the Steamboat
Chapter 3: The First Discovery
Chapter 4: Across the Bottomless Pit
Chapter 5: A New Master
Chapter 6: Under Crevice Pit
Chapter 7: The Underground Hospital
Chapter 8: Stephen Draws a Map
Chapter 9: Free at Last?
Chapter 10: The Legacy of Stephen Bishop
Stephen Bishop’s Life and Times
An Interview with Jerry Bransford, Mammoth Cave Guide
An engraving of Stephen Bishop from the nineteenth century
How I Wrote This Book:
A Note to Readers
When I was studying to be a newspaper reporter in college, I learned how to ask all the questions a reader might have about a story. Who was involved? What happened? When and where did it happen? Why? How?
So when I decided to write about Stephen Bishop, those are the questions I wanted to answer. Of course there was no one alive I could interview about Stephen—he was born around 1821 and died in 1857. But Stephen guided hundreds of people through Mammoth Cave, and some of them wrote about him afterwards. Their books and articles became my sources of information.
For one whole summer, the New York City Public Library was my home away from home. As often as I could, I went there and requested to see their very old books about Mammoth Cave. The old volumes don’t sit out on shelves like most library books. They are stored under special conditions so that they won’t fade or fall apart (or be stolen). To read them at the New York Public Library, you have to fill out a request form, which goes down to the basement storage area. The books are collected and sent back upstairs by means of a dumbwaiter (a little elevator used to transport books). You can’t take them out of the library, or even out of the research room. You have to take notes right there while you read.
Some of the books I looked at were so old that they were held together with string. I had to be very careful opening them up and flipping through them. I also read books about cave exploration during the 1800s and books about what life was like in Kentucky during slave times.
Later I took at trip to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. There I looked at newspapers from the 1840s and ’50s, hoping to find stories about Mammoth Cave. I didn’t find any, unfortunately. But I did discover something else. The front pages of the papers I looked at were covered not with the most important news stories of the day, but with ads for slaves on sale and notices about runaway slaves. Wow.
Stephen Bishop made many important discoveries, and enough people wrote about him that I was able to complete this book. Please note that the dialogue is not reproduced from any source. People writing about Stephen’s discoveries never quoted Stephen himself. Sometimes he was referred to by name; more often he was called simply the guide.
However, the writers who followed Stephen through the cave were obviously impressed by him. They often mentioned Stephen’s lively personality, his quiet self-confidence and sense of humor, and his deep knowledge of the cave.
There were a few things I had to guess at. For example, how did Stephen learn to read? Where did he meet his wife? We know that he could read, and we know he was married, but no one ever wrote down the details. So I had to do the best I could in telling his story.
The author would like to thank Mammoth Park ranger/guides Joy Medley Lyons and Charles DeCroix, historian Bob Ward, and Vickie Carson of the Mammoth Cave Public Information Office for their contributions to this manuscript and its accuracy. Any errors herein are the author’s, not theirs. In addition, thank you to the National Speleological Society for access to its videotape collection.
Here are a few of the reference books I used.
Rambles in the Mammoth Cave: during the year 1844, by A Visiter. Generally attributed to A. Bullitt. Also attributed to John Croghan, owner of Mammoth Cave. 1845.
A guide manual to the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. By Charles W. Wright, 1860.
The Mammoth Cave and its denizens; a complete descriptive guide. By A. D. Binkerd, 1869.
Pictorial guide to the Mammoth cave, Kentucky. A complete historic, descriptive and scientific account of the greatest subterranean wonder of the western world. By A. D. Binkerd, M.D., 1888.
I was also very fortunate to be able to interview present-day Mammoth Cave guide Jerry Bransford, whose great-great-grandfather, Materson Bransford, is part of Stephen’s story. You can read the interview located in the back of the book.
The New Guide
The young slave brushed aside branches and vines as he followed his master down the trail. Today he would start learning to guide visitors through Mammoth Cave. He was excited, but he was worried as well. Would he do a good job?
Seventeen-year-old Stephen Bishop had seen many caves in his life. He had grown up in the state of Kentucky, and Kentucky is full of caves, from animal dens in the sides of hills to holes larger than a house. But Mammoth Cave was so big that people came from all over to see it. And now it belonged to Stephen’s master, Franklin Gorin.
Mr. Gorin led the way. He talked to Stephen as they crossed a wooden bridge over a small stream.
I want everything to be ready by the end of April,
he said. That means you, too. You have to learn the trails quickly so you can start leading tours.
Franklin Gorin was a lawyer, but he was not a rich man. He had agreed to buy Mammoth Cave for $5,000. He had paid the first $1,000, but he