This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2009, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The tragic tale of John Jones is not the first caving disaster to captivate Utahns.
In 1925, from Feb. 3 to Feb. 19, The Salt Lake Tribune carried articles at the top of the front page chronicling a desperate struggle to free Floyd Collins from his entrapment in Sand Cave, adjacent to what is now Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky.
Like Jones, Collins did not survive his ordeal, wedged so tightly in a subterranean hole that he could not move.
Search officials, citing the threat posed to rescue workers, subsequently called off efforts to recover his body. Collins' family agreed, but a couple of months later hired miners to finish excavating a shaft to the body so it could be removed for burial.
Collins' fate has not been forgotten. It has been documented in films, books, museums and music, including a song by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
"It's an important part of the folk history of this country," said Roger Brucker, co-author of Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins.
Brucker sees similarities between the Collins and Jones cases, based on what he read in tracking the Utah tragedy from Dayton, Ohio. While Jones's rescue effort was far shorter than the two-week operation to free Collins, it was long enough for the public to connect with the victim.
"We saw a picture of his lovely wife, the fact that they have a child and another on the way, and that he's in his second year of med school. What a promising future," he said. "Those kind of details increase the horror of what for many people brings to life early childhood fears of being buried alive."
In 1917, Collins discovered Crystal Cave, now part of the national park. But his efforts to make it a tourist attraction struggled. Hoping to find a back entrance to Crystal Cave that was closer to a road used by passing motorists, he entered Sand Cave on Jan. 30.
But a falling rock pinned his leg to the ground, leaving him unable to move.
Friends such as Johnny Gerald, described in Tribune stories as "cave man and hill billy of the same type as Collins," figured out where he was but could not get him out.
Louisville Courier-Journal reporter William "Skeets" Miller, who won a Pulitzer Prize covering the story, led one foray into the cave, quoting Collins as lamenting "Get me out Johnny, old pal. ... My God, Johnny, we were boys together. Don't fail me now."
But the cave's ceiling caved in on Feb. 5, preventing further underground exploration. Efforts shifted to cutting a shaft from above, a slow process that did not reach Collins until a day after he died.
Unlike the controlled rescue scene in Utah this past week, the situation in Kentucky was chaotic.
Thousands of spectators turned up. Vendors set up booths to make money off the masses. Kentucky's governor brought in the national guard to keep the crowd at bay, encircling the search site with barbed wire fencing. Locals squabbled with the government engineers brought in to direct the rescue.
By Feb. 10, the governor launched a formal inquiry in nearby Cave City to put to rest abundant rumors that the whole thing was a hoax and Collins was elsewhere.
He wasn't. Like Jones, he was trapped in a confined space too tight for rescue work. "Life is fragile under those conditions," Brucker said.
mikeg@sltrib.com" Target="_BLANK">mikeg@sltrib.com