Images of the Past
Wind Cave Exploration
Season 9 Episode 15 | 2m 31sVideo has Closed Captions
The video clip is extracted from "Wind Cave - The World Below," a 1990 documentary produced for the
The video clip is extracted from "Wind Cave - The World Below," a 1990 documentary produced for the National Speleological Society in cooperation with the National Park Service. The clip begins with 1990s explorers looking at an etching left by Alvin McDonald. The clip also provides a brief history of Wind Cave exploration and features scenes from a trip to Wind Cave's deepest reaches.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Images of the Past is a local public television program presented by SDPB
Support is provided by the Friends of SDPB
Images of the Past
Wind Cave Exploration
Season 9 Episode 15 | 2m 31sVideo has Closed Captions
The video clip is extracted from "Wind Cave - The World Below," a 1990 documentary produced for the National Speleological Society in cooperation with the National Park Service. The clip begins with 1990s explorers looking at an etching left by Alvin McDonald. The clip also provides a brief history of Wind Cave exploration and features scenes from a trip to Wind Cave's deepest reaches.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(gentle piano music) (adventurous music) - Eric, we got some historic signatures over here on the wall.
This one here is from Alvin McDonald.
Alvin was the first explorer of Wind Cave back around the early 1890s, and some of the people to include, some of the associates signed the wall back during that time.
- Of course, now Rick, everybody knows that's not an appropriate thing to do, but then in his day that wasn't so unusual.
- Yeah, today it's a big no-no.
- [Narrator] In 1890, a South Dakota mining company filed a claim on this land and hired Jesse McDonald to develop and manage the cave as a visitor attraction, rather than a mine.
McDonald settled on the site with his family, including his 17-year-old son, Alvin.
Alvin extensively explored the cave from 1890 until 1893.
(people chattering) - It's kind of a stroll more than a walk.
- Yeah, it's a good place.
We're getting some of our first crawls up here.
- Crawls?
Hey, I'm used to that.
- Yeah, you've been doing quite a bit of cave over stage bar, haven't you?
- Yeah, I have.
We finally got off our knees.
We made some fairly major discoveries.
We got fairly large rooms and some hallways now.
(rustling) (adventurous music swells) - Rick, this passage is called the spillway, and this marks about the end of the explorations of the early explorers, Alvin McDonald and his bunch.
They had about eight or nine miles of cave that they had discovered.
In the early 1960s, Dave Schnute and Herb and Jan Conn went up to the spillway and now we've got about another 40 miles of cave map beyond this.
- Well, and hopefully a few more miles on top of that if we can find something today.
- Yeah, that'd be okay, Tom.
- Let's head on up through here.
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Images of the Past is a local public television program presented by SDPB
Support is provided by the Friends of SDPB