Salt Peter Cave near Cartersville

This is a picture of a closed factory I took in Cartersville about a year or so ago.  It may be the old Westinghouse building I have rode by a twice times over 50 years ago.

 

We went to Salt Peter Cave I think near Kingston, Georgia.  Once as an Explorer Scouts a group of us schouts went with our scoutmaster and camped out not far from the largest mouth of the cave.

Secondly,  a couple years later just a bunch of friends went.   I forgot if we camped out or not.  I remember the cave was miles out a long dirt road.  It was marked private property.  Well, we were elderly teenagers, what do you expect?

The cave goes into a mountain or large hill with two entrances.  The cave has many tunnels, rooms, stalagmites  and stalactites.   I remember one big set of stalagmites  and stalactites met each other, it looked like two teepees, one balanced on top of the other.  Once getting way beyond where we should have went I felt around and found something round and smooth, this was in the dark, I couldn’t wait to turn on my flashlight to see what was.  I was thinking it was an monster egg or something.  It was a flashbulb.  In one room I think we waded on the edge of an underground pond or lake.  We left there quickly.

We came across two or three gave size pits.  We figured they were Indian graves.  During the Civil War they mined for salt peter in this cave.

You can go through one tunnel and come across and opening facing the opening the huge entrance door, which you could probably throw a house through.  When you come across the entrance to the room you are 25 or so feet up and you can walk carefully down to the big  room’s floor  but what we did not know until we got about ten feet down was layers of bat shit.  And yes, its true, bat shit is slippery.

Outside the biggest cave opening  is a tree hanging over the opening.  Larry carried a heavy rope.  One of us tied the rope to a=the tree over the mouth and we took times swinging out in the pitch black and swinging back.  It looked that a thrill, swing out and at one point the floor of the cave drops deep and you are above blackness. Then, your weight causes you to swing back to the take-off point.   I unintentionally  put a stop to all that fun.  I was last.  I was overweight.  I swung out  and as soon as I left the rocky edge I  felt myself slipping.  I hung on for ear life and  finally slid off the rope onto the rolling hill going down into the blackness.  I hit the upward hill of the cave and started rolling fast towards the drop off into blackness.  I was rolling fast and cold not grab anything to slow me down.  Then my body crashed into an upward boulder which stopped me solid.

The skin was burned off the palm of my hands and big blisters replaced the skin.  I was in misery for a few days but I lived (as you can tell).