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Roger Brucker | |
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 Roger Brucker, 2006 | |
| Born | July 27, 1929 Shelby, Ohio, USA |
| Known for | Cave Explorer and Author |
Roger W. Brucker (born July 27, 1929) is an American cave explorer and author of books about caves. He is most closely associated with Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the world's longest cave, which he has been exploring and writing about since 1954.
After graduating from Oberlin College with an art degree in 1951, Brucker enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio where he wrote and directed documentary, technical and training films.[ citation needed ]
While in the Air Force, Brucker was temporarily stationed in New York City, where he became friends with some people who introduced him to caving, through the National Speleological Society (NSS). He participated in Floyd Collins' Crystal Cave (C-3) Expedition in Kentucky in 1954, in which dozens of explorers spent one week underground, in an effort to determine if Crystal Cave might be connected with other caves. Although such connections were not found at that time (they later were), the expedition set new standards for organized cave exploration, and became the subject of Brucker's first book, The Caves Beyond, which he co-authored with Joe Lawrence, Jr.[ citation needed ]
Convinced that Crystal Cave would one day connect with caves in nearby Mammoth Cave National Park, Brucker and other explorers formed the Cave Research Foundation (CRF), to survey and study Mammoth Cave and other caves in the area. Through the late 1950s and 60s, CRF expanded the known reaches of Mammoth Cave and other caves under the adjoining Flint Ridge. In 1972, cavers found a connection between Mammoth Cave and the Flint Ridge Cave System. That discovery made Mammoth the world's longest cave, inspiring Brucker and Richard Watson to write The Longest Cave.[ citation needed ]
Brucker began working on the book Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins with historian Robert K. Murray. Brucker had long been fascinated with the true story of Floyd Collins, who was trapped in a cave in 1925 and could not be rescued, despite a massive effort that received national attention. [1] The authors interviewed dozens of witnesses and studied hundreds of documents to uncover facts about the tragedy that were not previously known. As part of the research, Brucker and a small group of explorers even ventured into Sand Cave several times to the spot where Collins was trapped, [1] to better understand why rescuers had been unable to free him. Trapped! was published in 1979. The book helped to inspire the stage musical Floyd Collins by playwright Tina Landau and composer Adam Guettel. In 2006, the book was optioned by actor Billy Bob Thornton, who planned to develop it into a movie. A screenplay was written by Thornton's writing partner, Tom Epperson, and the project was reportedly greenlit by Paramount Pictures. However, Thornton's option expired, and rights to the book were then acquired by producer Peter R.J. Deyell in 2011. [2]
In 1983, rival groups of explorers, including Brucker, discovered a connection between Mammoth Cave and nearby Roppel Cave, further expanding the known reaches of the Mammoth Cave system beyond the boundaries of the national park. Brucker later teamed up with James Borden to write Beyond Mammoth Cave: A Tale of Obsession in the World's Longest Cave. [3]
In 2009, Brucker's fifth book and first historical novel was published. Grand, Gloomy, and Peculiar: Stephen Bishop at Mammoth Cave is based on the true story of Stephen Bishop, a slave who gained fame as a guide and explorer at Mammoth Cave in the 1840s and 50s.[ citation needed ]
Mammoth Cave National Park is an American national park in west-central Kentucky, encompassing portions of Mammoth Cave, the longest cave system known in the world.
Cave City is a home rule-class city in Barren County, Kentucky, in the United States. The population was 2,240 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Glasgow Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Colossal Cave Adventure is a text-based adventure game, released in 1976 by developer Will Crowther for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. It was expanded upon in 1977 by Don Woods. In the game, the player explores a cave system rumored to be filled with treasure and gold. The game is composed of dozens of areas, and the player moves between these areas and interacts with objects in them by typing one- or two-word commands which are interpreted by the game's natural language input system. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's attempted actions. It is the first well-known example of interactive fiction, as well as the first well-known adventure game, for which it was also the namesake.
William Crowther is an American computer programmer, caver, and rock climber. He is best known as the co-creator of Colossal Cave Adventure from 1975 onward, a seminal computer game that influenced the first decade of video game design and inspired the text adventure game genre.
Cave rescue is a highly specialized field of wilderness rescue in which injured, trapped or lost cave explorers are medically treated and extracted from various cave environments.
Patricia ("Pat") P. Crowther, later known as Patricia P. Wilcox, is an American cave explorer and cave surveyor active in the 1960s and early 1970s. She also worked as a computer programmer.
The Green River is a 384-mile-long (618 km) tributary of the Ohio River that rises in Lincoln County in south-central Kentucky. Tributaries of the Green River include the Barren River, the Nolin River, the Pond River and the Rough River. The river was named after Nathanael Greene, a general of the American Revolutionary War.
Moonmilk is a white, creamy substance found inside limestone, dolomite, and possibly other types of caves. It is a precipitate from limestone comprising aggregates of fine crystals of varying composition usually made of carbonates such as calcite, aragonite, hydromagnesite, and/or monohydrocalcite.
Jewel Cave National Monument contains Jewel Cave, currently the third longest cave in the world, with 209.32 miles of mapped passageways. It is located approximately 13 miles (21 km) west of the town of Custer in Black Hills of South Dakota. It became a national monument in 1908.
Stephen Bishop was an American cave explorer and self-taught geologist known for being one of the first people to explore and map Mammoth Cave in the U.S. state of Kentucky. Mammoth Cave is regarded as the longest cave system in the world and Bishop's map of the cave, hand-drawn from memory off-site in 1842, was included in a book published in 1844. It was regarded as the authoritative map of the cave system for over four decades. Bishop was enslaved and worked as a guide at Mammoth for approximately 19 years. He was freed by manumission the year before his death.
William Floyd Collins, better known as Floyd Collins, was an American cave explorer, principally in a region of Central Kentucky that houses hundreds of miles of interconnected caverns within Mammoth Cave National Park, the longest known cave system in the world. In the early 20th century, in an era known as the Kentucky Cave Wars, commercial cave owners and explorers in Kentucky entered into a bitter competition to exploit the bounty of caves for commercial profit from tourists, who paid to see the caves. In 1917 and 1918, Collins discovered and commercialized Great Crystal Cave in the Flint Ridge Cave System. But the cave was remote and visitors were few. Collins had an ambition to find another cave he could open to the public closer to the main roads, and entered into an agreement with a neighbor to open up Sand Cave, a small cave on the neighbor's property. On January 30, 1925, while working to enlarge the small passage in Sand Cave, Collins became trapped in a narrow crawlway 55 feet (17 m) below ground. The rescue operation to save Collins became a national newspaper sensation and one of the first major news stories to be reported using the new technology of broadcast radio.
The Cave Research Foundation (CRF) is an American private, non-profit group dedicated to the exploration, research, and conservation of caves. The group arose in the early 1950s from the exploration efforts at Floyd Collins Crystal Cave, now within Mammoth Cave National Park. Its stated goals were: to promote exploration and documentation of caves and karst areas, initiate and support cave and karst research, aid in cave conservation and protection, and to assist with the interpretation of caves and karst to the public.
Colossal Cavern is a cave in Kentucky, United States, the main entrance of which is at the foot of a steep hill beyond Eaton Valley, and 1.5 miles from Mammoth Cave.
William Burke "Skeets" Miller was a newspaper and radio reporter.
Great Onyx Cave is a cave located in Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, United States. The National Park Service offers a commercial tour of the cave.
Mammoth Cave Baptist Church and Cemetery is a historic church in Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. It was built in 1827 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.
Diamond Caverns in Park City, Kentucky was discovered on July 14, 1859. Tours are available year around; closed Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas. Tours last one hour and is a half mile round trip.
The Fisher Ridge Cave System is a cave system located in Hart County, Kentucky, United States, near Mammoth Cave National Park. As of November 2019 it had been mapped to a length of 130.001 miles (209.216 km), making it the fifth-longest cave in the United States and the tenth-longest in the world.
Robert K. Murray was an American professor of history at the Pennsylvania State University for 35 years, best known for The Harding Era (1969), a biography of US President Warren G. Harding, which won a History Book of the Month Club selection, McNight Distinguished Book Award, and Phi Alpha Theta National Book award.
Patricia Kambesis is an American caver, cartographer and educator.
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