Month: July 2023

Written by Russell Burrows: After I had progressed back into the cave a ways, I came upon the first bad stumbling block. In fact, it was a good-sized stumbling block. It probably weighs about ten tons or so and it has fallen from the roof of the cave into the passageway. I looked it all […]

Written by Russell Burrows: I have been into caving the better part of my life and had no fear of going into this one. Besides, this cave seemed to be something different, something natural and yet modified, and certainly blocked up for a very special reason. With the pit, carvings and strange markings in the […]

Written by Russell Burrows: My discovery was occupying one hundred percent of my mind. At the end of each day I carefully concealed my digging so that it wouldn’t be located by someone else, and I returned day after day, trying to figure a way of working that keystone out without taking a hammer and […]

Written by Russell Burrows: Now this valley lies on a northwest to southeast heading and is about five hundred or so yards in length with a width of about seventy-five feet to about three hundred feet. It has a depth at the cliff walls ranging from about twenty-five to forty feet. The walls of the […]

(Fred Rydholm): Russell Burrows liked to explore places that had been untouched for a long time. He knew of an area where rumor held there had once been a number of old homesteads. It was common knowledge in that region. There was also a legend connected with the homesteads; it had to do with a […]

(Fred Rydholm) It was also during these later years at Olney that Russell Burrows became a serious caver. Southern Illinois has many known caves but there are still some to be found. The picture that most people have of caves is a stereotyped one of an open entrance in the side of a hill. This […]

Written by Russell Burrows I first met my wife Lila in Chicago in 1964. I had gone there, as have many from West Virginia, seeking the often-referred-to fortune! Of course, no fortune was waiting there for most, but the fortune I found was Lila. I courted for over a year and we were married in […]

Written by Russell Burrows The earliest memories I have are of living on the side of a mountain just down the road from the Richwood Cemetery. Our family was mighty poor but we got by. I don’t know to this day how we did it. My father worked for the Cherry River Broom and Lumber […]

Written by Fred Rydholm I told Jon I was planning to go to Vincennes that fall, to see the artifacts from the cave, and if he was interested he could come with me. We could see for ourselves what there was to see. After being away from it all for so long and having so […]

Written by Fred Rydholm The woman from New York was a very sincere and extremely interested member of ISAC. She was the one person that I felt was doing everything in her power to get the story of the cave to the proper people, but in the course of time I learned that she too […]

Written by Fred Rydholm Back in 1975 Jack had been asked to serve on a committee of the Old Northwest Bicentennial Corporation when the city of Vincennes was preparing to celebrate the Bicentennial of the United States. The Corporation had acquired some property, and a small dwelling on it was converted into a museum. They […]

Written by Fred Rydholm The area of southern Illinois and Indiana is richly endowed with evidence of several different early cultures which archaeologists know all too little about. The earliest was the Adena culture, which is believed to have developed around 500 BC and to have died out by 200 AD. It was centered just […]

Written by Fred Rydholm It was during the summer of 1988 that I found myself seated in about the third row from the front in a huge room in the old “Iron Works” building in Columbus, Georgia. The building went back to the time of the Civil War. They had made cannon and ironclad ships […]

Written by Fred Rydholm I am a retired teacher, who for many years has been digging out little-known facts of local history about my native haunts, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In tracing its history back into prehistoric times I discovered a whole era of world-wide copper trading which is either unknown to or […]

Written by Fred Rydholm Each year archaeological finds are made all over the world, and occasionally sensational discoveries occur, ones that excite archaeologists and the public both. In such a case, it takes a few years for the site’s significance to be assessed and for full details to reach the public press and the museum […]

Written by Fred Rydholm Russell Burrows stood up from his seat on a rock ledge. The date was April 2nd of 1982 and the place was a remote valley in southern Illinois. Burrows was a “caver,” a solitary cave-explorer, and he had decided that there was nothing to find in this valley. Within a few […]