Branden Johnson Chair - Dogwood City Grotto ®

Devil’s Well ASC 816 Survey Trip
August 14, 2004

Devil’s Well ASC 816 Survey Trip August 14, 2004 Mark Medlen, Kelly Keener, Jim Loftin Camped at the quarry on Chandler Mountain Friday the 13th. The road and field were really grown up with no 4 wheeler tracks. Record lows were set at 52 Friday night and at 57 Saturday night as was recorded in Anniston. 2nd nice and cool weekend in a row. Wow, strange for August, but I’ll take it! Saturday morning we made our way to the cave, Devil’s Well, actually, the lower Blowhole entrance of Devil’s Well. The other end of the field was really grown up, too. We thought we could walk along the creek to the entrance but after Mark investigated it he reported there was no way. So it was back to the upper parking spot and the trail through the kudzu into the woods. Well guess what? There was no trail anymore. We could barely see our old flags and had to machete tunnels through the briar and kudzu infested jungle for 100 feet before we broke out into the woods. It was an easy walk from there. The blowhole entrance sure felt good when we got there seeing as how it was the middle of the day at the time and plenty warmed up. It was worthy of its name and we were feeling grateful for its reputation. It’s a small hole that the original explorers had to pull rocks out of to get in. Mark wondered if Indians had tried to cover up the entrance because of the cave being a possible burial cave. The entrance is straight down for 15’, too small to fall and just big enough for one person, preferably not too big. Your body fills the biggest part of the crack. It’s hard to see where to put your feet as your eyes get dust and leaves blowing in them in the stout breeze coming up from below. Then you hit the bottom and all the heavier dirt and leaves land on top of you. Then it’s down the slope and into the main passage. You look around and imagine what the Indians were thinking when they had their burial there. There have been human bones found in the waterfall room and brought out and dated to the Woodland Period. All are gone now except a piece of a femur. Mark sent Alan Kressler a digital shot of the bone and Alan had an anthropologist identify it as a femur. The cave’s modern name is ironic if this Indian burial was an intentional burial. Or, it might have been an original explorer that went in from the upper entrance and got into trouble. There are no (cedar) trees in there. Maybe he used a fiber rope and it’s all gone by now. We’ll never know in this lifetime. There are some pretty formations along this part of the cave with some sizable clusters of flowstone, stalagmites, stalactites and soda straws. There’s an immediate duck under and crawl through that opens up into more borehole passage. Close by is the side passage that needed surveying and was our objective for the day. Mark and Mike Davis had previously checked this passage for at least 1000’ and no end, although it was getting lower. There is a stream flowing out of this passage but the stream meanders in and out of this dry small borehole type passage sometimes requiring wading or tricky avoidance of the water. As the ceiling gets lower there’s more fossils showing in the ceiling with some being under water. There’s some large horn coral and other large clustered coral called Acrocyathus, or better known as Lithostrotionella. There are some sizable clusters hanging from the ceiling. The Audubon Field Guide to N. American Fossils date these to the Mississippian Age, 225- 250 million years ago. No where in the guidebook does it refer to "horn corals." The closest looking cone-shaped coral in there was Heterophrentis. It dates to the Lower and Middle Devonian Age, 370- 400 million years ago. They did seem to occur lower down in the limestone. I wonder if we underestimate the true age of Alabama caves at just a few hundred thousand years old? Some of the survey points had to be made from globs of mud and stuck to the side of the bedrock. Many of these globs got shaped into human characteristics, which would provide a good point and base. The ceiling had been progressively getting lower and lower. We decided to end the day’s survey at the squatting-sized passage to continue later when we are dressed for wetter surveying. Animal life was strangely vacant in the water. There were many heliomyzid flies all over the ceiling and walls about 1100’ back and one cave salamander. Mark said he saw 2 bats and that is all the life we saw. Not much air flow in this side passage but not dead air either. We had added about 1300’ to Mark’s survey of the cave, and it was some of the funest surveying ever gets. We exited the cave about 4 hours after we entered and flagged an easier trail back to the jeep. Grilled some good steaks on the fire that evening and enjoyed the coolest night ever in history for a second night in a row.
Written By: Jim Loftin