This article. Was written in the office of American Statesman on February, 5 1952. It was titled:
UT Students Explore Austin Cave mystery
(This is part of a series of blog posts that Austin Ghost Tours and Haunted Texas and Beyond are posting about the caves and the mystery treasures in and around Austin throughout Austin’s history.
How much truth is there in the century old legend that Austin is situated, perhaps somewhat precariously, over a lambrinth of passageways constituting a lost cavern?
The cavern purportedly is an extension of Austin Cave, a little known subterranean passage which begins in an abandoned limestone quarry near the Lake, in a residential section of West Austin.
Through the years have come many wild tales concerning the city’s underground mystery. There is, for instance, the story of the boys who went back in The Cave to a point under Congress Avenue. They could hear, They declared, the noise of street cars rumbling overhead. Somewhere in the city is a wall built, allegedly of bricks, found in a cave near here. A fraternity pledge at the University of Texas once was left overnight in The Cave, He returned the next day with a weird tale of having wandered for hours in and in an apparently endless maze of tunnels, encountering waterfalls and deep lakes. In the annals of unofficial history are eerie accounts of Frontier Day abandons who frequently held up coaches at A River Crossing, near the present site of Tom Miller Dam. Both bandits and loot always managed to vanish from sight immediately after the theft.
As a modern follow up to the story, recently a bulldozer broke into the mouth of a cave in Rollingwood, near the place of early robberies. In The Cave was found a cache containing furniture and other items of value, most of them in advanced stage of decay. And so the stories and the speculation grow and grow. Is there any evidence to support the theory that a cavern does indeed stretch out in a network of arteries underneath Austin? Do the branches extend as one favorite? Legend has it, westward to Lake Austin, eastward under the center of the city to the University, and northward to a point somewhere near Mount Bunnell.
The university. SPELEOLOGICAL Society, a group of students interested in the study of caves, was intrigued by Austin’s underground mystery and determined to investigate. Altogether, members of the organization spent a total of more than 50 hours in Austin Cave exploring, mapping and photographing. Their findings did not really shed new light on any old myths.
Ultimately, what they found were small pathways, most of which had been filled with silt over the years, but nothing really intriguing or exciting.
Jeanine Plumer
