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Few natural formations are as awe-inspiring or intriguing as a cave. The deep, dark recesses immediately conjure up images of adventure, mystery, terror, robbers and pirates.
At Cave-In-Rock in southern Illinois, you can experience this fascination for yourself. Sitting atop the high bluffs overlooking the scenic Ohio River, the heavily wooded park is named for the 55-foot-wide cave that was carved out of the limestone rock by water thousands of years ago. Trails winding along the riverbank offer views of riverboats, barges and other river scenes.
History
The actual history of this imposing natural phenomenon is colorful and provocative. The first European explorer to encounter it was M. de Lery of France, who in 1729 called it caverne dans Le Roc. It was a conspicuous curiosity frequently mentioned by later travelers in diaries and journals.
Following the Revolutionary War, this immense recess came to serve as the ideal lair for outlaws, bandits and river pirates who preyed on the people traveling along the Ohio River.
One of the most ambitious of these ruthless malefactors was Samuel Mason. Once an officer in George Washington’s Revolutionary Army, in 1797 he converted the cavern into a tavern which he called the Cave-In-Rock.
From this apparently innocent and inviting position, Mason would dispatch his cohorts upriver to befriend unwary and bewildered travelers with offers of help and guidance. As they neared the cave, these henchmen would disable their boats or force them toward the yawning hollow, where the hapless pilgrims would be robbed, or worse. Few victims lived to tell their story.
By the early 1800s, following the demise of the Mason Gang, the cave sheltered the even more notorious Harpe Brothers, a pair of killers fleeing execution in Kentucky. They continued their personal reign of thievery and murder in Illinois, using the cave as hideout and headquarters until they too were killed.
It’s interesting to note that the cave served as a backdrop for a scene in the movie “How The West Was Won.” The scene was a near-accurate portrayal of how, in the 18th and 19th centuries, ruthless bandits used the cave to lure unsuspecting travelers to an untimely end.
Although other desperadoes continued to take advantage of the secrecy and seclusion afforded by Cave-In-Rock, by the mid-1830s the quickening westward expansion of civilization and the steady growth in the local population and commerce had destroyed or driven out the “river rats” and the cave began to serve as temporary shelter for other pioneers on their way west. Throughout the 19th century, this remarkable geological feature was an important landmark, prominently displayed on maps from the period.
In 1929, the State of Illinois acquired 64.5 acres for a park that since has increased to 204 acres. The well-wooded, 60-foot-high hills and the rugged bluffs along the river - commanding expansive views of the famous waterway - became Cave-In-Rock State Park.
In the words of Illinois historian John W. Allen, “Today only the natural beauty of the historic spot remains, clothed in mystery. In the hollow silence of the cave that echoes the peaceful cooing of doves, a visitor can let a vivid imagination run riot. But he can dream little that will be beyond what actually happened.”
From Wikipedia:
The Cave
Cave-in-Rock's primary feature is a striking 55-foot-wide cave, formed by water. The first European to come across it was M. de Lery of France, who found it in 1739 and called it "caverne dans Le Roc".
[edit] History
From the 1790s to the 1870s the area around Cave-in-Rock was plagued by what historians as early as the 1830s referred to as the "Ancient Colony of Horse-Thieves, Counterfeiters and Robbers", and better known today due to Otto Rothert's history early in the 20th Century as the "Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock".
Other names for the cave include Rocking Cave, Rock-and-Cave and House of Nature.
In 1790 counterfeiters Philip Alston and John Duff (John McElduff) used the cave as some type of rendezvous, though details are scarce. Although folklore printed in 19th Century histories failed to establish a prior connection between the two men, both lived in the area of Natchez, Mississippi, at the start of the Revolutionary War.
By the arrival of Samuel Mason at the cave in 1797 Duff was living upriver a few miles either at Battery Rock, or across the Ohio River at what would become Caseyville, Kentucky. Mason had previously made Diamond Island and Red Banks his headquarters. In 1797 he moved his base of operations to the cave and made it the home of river pirates. Two of Mason's brothers had been business partners of Duff at Kaskaskia, Illinois, in the 1780s.
James Wilson is the next leader of the Cave-in-Rock band, and may have been the Wilson who married one of Capt. Mason's nieces. In 1799 he's remembered for installing a sign reading "Wilson's Liquor Vault and House of Entertainment" over the cave entrance. Rather than be the actual leader he may have simply been the front man for the operation.
By this time in either 1798 or in the spring of 1799 Duff and his associates had been making salt (or looking for silver) at the Great Salt Springs area along the Saline River in southeastern Illinois. Soldiers from Fort Massac captured him and three of his men named Blakely, Hazle and Hall. The soldiers took their captives by boat down the Saline River to the Ohio, and then down the Ohio to below the cave. Although the old histories don't explain why they stopped at the cave, subsequent events indicate it may have taken place during the spring of 1799 when Wilson was running his operation, thus making the stop one of refreshment and entertainment. During the stop Duff and his men escaped and captured the soldiers. They placed them tied up in the boat and pushed the boat into the river to float downstream to the fort.
The infamous Harpes also reached the cave region in the spring of 1799. They were Big Harpe and Little Harpe, who were considered by many historians to be brothers Micajah and Wiley Harpe, though some sources provide different names and indicate they were first cousins instead. Contemporary references often left off the (e) at the end of their name. They are associated with two separate stories at the cave and one at the infamous Potts Spring area to the north.
The first story involves them pushing a young couple off the top of the cliff. They survived. The second involves an act of piracy where only one man survived. Later he was forced off the cliff as well, this time involving a horse. The Potts Spring story is simply recalled as a murder of two or three hunters.
Mason and Wilson's time at the cave may have come to an end during the summer of 1799 when attacked by a group of bounty-hunters/vigilantes under the leadership of Capt. Young who called themselves, "The Exterminators".
No contemporary accounts show the cave occupied by river pirates in the first decade of the 19th Century, but the outlawry continued as the Harpes retreated back into Kentucky, Mason traveled downriver and began to focus on highway robbery along the Natchez Trace, and Duff was killed by assassins on June 4, 1799. By the middle of the decade church services were being held in the cave. These Christians eventually formed Big Creek Baptist Church, the first church organized in southeastern Illinois in 1807.
The next generation of outlaws in the region fall either under the Sturdivant Gang, a group of counterfeiters based at Sturdivant Fort on top of the bluffs overlooking the Ohio River at what is now Rosiclare, Illinois; or the Ford's Ferry Gang led by James Ford based a few miles upriver from the cave at what became known as Ford's Ferry, Kentucky. The Potts Inn stories take place during this time as well.
Law enforcement officials led three raids against Sturdivant Fort in 1822 and 1823. Although it's not clear what happened following the raids, the gang disappears from the area by 1830. The Ford's Ferry Gang was broken up following the mysterious deaths or murders of James Ford's two sons followed by his own assassination in 1833.
Even after the death of Ford, outlaws remained. Isaiah L. Potts operated Potts Inn on the Ford's Ferry Road in Illinois north of the cave where travelers checked in, but sometimes failed to check out. The legend of Billy Potts, the returning son murdered unknowingly by his father, likely took place in the months following Ford's assassination. Records show the elder Potts and his wife separating in 1834 or 1835.
Eason Bigsby or Bixby also took up counterfeiting in Hardin County in the decades following the Sturdivants. His attack on his wife Anna in an effort to find out where her first husband's money was buried dates to the early 1860s and led to the legends of Anna Bixby, her treasure and her ghost. She actually survived running off of a cliff in the dark. She's remembered in the 21st Century as the namesake for the Anna Bixby Women's Center in nearby Harrisburg, Illinois.
Although not completely connected to the Ancient Colony, the Logan Belt Gang terrorized Hardin County in the 1870s and 1880s until Belt himself was assassinated.
[edit] Pop Culture
Popular culture recalls the river pirate history in scenes from Walt Disney's Davy Crockett and the River Pirates, and the MGM classic How the West Was Won. Both filmed at the cave as well as Battery Rock. In 1997, The History Channel show, "In Search of History" also filmed at the site for an episode entitled "River Pirates"."
[edit] Geography
Cave-In-Rock is located at 37°28′12″N, 88°9′59″W (37.470050, -88.166297).GR1
According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 1.1 km² (0.4 mi²). 1.0 km² (0.4 mi²) of it is land and 0.1 km² (0.04 mi²) of it (7.14%) is water.
* Maps and aerial photos for 37°28′12″N 88°09′59″W / 37.470050, -88.166297Coordinates: 37°28′12″N 88°09′59″W / 37.470050, -88.166297
o Street map from Google Maps, or Yahoo! Maps, or Windows Live Local
o Satellite image from Google Maps, Windows Live Local, WikiMapia
o Topographic map from TopoZone
o Aerial image or topographic map from TerraServer-USA
[edit] Demographics
As of the censusGR2 of 2000, there were 346 people, 165 households, and 96 families residing in the village. The population density was 334.0/km² (874.6/mi²). There were 201 housing units at an average density of 194.0/km² (508.1/mi²). The racial makeup of the village was 99.57% White, 0.43% from other races, and 0.18% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.02% of the population.
There were 165 households out of which 28.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.8% were married couples living together, 10.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 41.8% were non-families. 41.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 28.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.10 and the average family size was 2.82.
In the village the population was spread out with 23.4% under the age of 18, 7.5% from 18 to 24, 24.9% from 25 to 44, 19.4% from 45 to 64, and 24.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females there were 81.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 82.8 males.
The median income for a household in the village was $20,694, and the median income for a family was $28,393. Males had a median income of $35,833 versus $18,125 for females. The per capita income for the village was $12,050. About 20.5% of families and 28.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 43.8% of those under age 18 and 24.1% of those age 65 or over.
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Top Stories for the Week of May 12 - 16, 2008
In tech it was mashup week. HP bought EDS (via Ars Technica), Comcast bought Plaxo (via Venture Beat), and CBS is buying CNet Networks for $1.8 billion or so (via News.com, of course). CNet getting bought is no surprise, says PaidContent.org. Buyout rumors have been uttered so often, "it's the equivalent of yelling Freebird at a rock concert." What does CBS get? "Built-in tech coverage they can integrate with their own news reporting organization is an obvious benefit, as well as the coveted news.com domain name," blogs Profy. HipMojo says it's a smart move, arguing that TV-based media companies like CBS "need to buy and buy big time, otherwise the future looks awfully like print’s past: downwards and smaller."
Finally, American artist and giant Robert Rauschenberg died at age 82, and memorials pointing to mainstream obits were posted at Yikes! and Clingfire and 3 Quarks Daily and other blogs. Gawker recalls that Rauschenberg "started out making art out of junk he found on the streets of lower Manhattan." Boing Boing calls him "a pioneer of multimedia art in the truest sense of the phrase." Green Cine Daily says RR "helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art - not to mention between art and life." Sippey posts a clip of the artiste talking about his work Erased de Kooning Drawing. And Gothamist wraps it up with a Rauschenberg quote that only an artist could utter: “I think you’re born an artist or not. I couldn’t have learned it. And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations.” Ouch.
As expected, 
By Sean Maguire
sold more games than all but one album sold in all of 2007. Ironically, one of the things that makes the game so enjoyable is that you can just cruise around in your car listening to music. I have found myself playing the game sitting in the car waiting for the song to end before I got out of the car to get some hot coffee. This month’s quiz is dedicated to songs that can be found in a previous GTA games. As always you need to put both artist and title in the comments section (or you can e-mail me) and if you are correct I will un-bold it and give you credit. The Lyrics Quiz is for entertainment purposes only so please do not use anything besides your own meandering mind to help you up with the answers. Now onto the quiz:
We've been dreaming of using the Metal Gear Solid 4 Bluetooth headset for secret pantsing missions every since we laid eyes on it. Other than these new shots that will probably self-destruct soon, no new details we didn't already know: Bluetooth 2.0, eight-hour talk time, 160 standby, drops on June 12 with the game itself. Peek another shot below, or head to IGN for a few more.
[
PlayStation 3 Getting 2.35 Firmware "Shortly" (As In Right Now) Eric Lempell, Director of PlayStation Network Operations, writes on the official PlayStation blog that PS3 owners will be downloading new firmware revision ![sample1[1]](http://blog.rojo.com/rojoblog/WindowsLiveWriter/sample1%5B1%5D.png)
meets Star Trek
in that the characters are fowl mouthed in a setting of space. But the planets that they visit should look familiar because they are all based on pop culture. First the crew head to a black and white setting reminiscent of the old Frankenstein, followed by trips to an Indiana Jones themed planet before going low key on Hysteria Lane surround by desperate, albeit green, housewives.
’s Stephen Root) is your typical purple captain who cares more about sex than, well, just about everything else combines. Which could explain the inclusion of Six (voiced by Singled Out’s Jenny McCarthy) in the crew, a sex slave cyborg. Rounding out the rest of the crew is Chode’s inept nephew Whip, T’nuk, who sounds like a combination of every lunch lady ever (prudes and females in general may not want to spell her name backwards), and the ambiguously gay robot Gus. Although they should have learned from Ace and Gary
, ambiguously gay dudes are much funnier in pairs.![Terror Alert Level: Elevated [YELLOW]](http://bp3.blogger.com/_XZ-NrM6Icko/RxLfJZFCFqI/AAAAAAAAAgY/TFlc2-Uh3Cg/s400/small_elevated.png)
on my Terror Alert Scale. 
![Terror Alert Level: High [ORANGE]](http://bp0.blogger.com/_XZ-NrM6Icko/RxLfJpFCFsI/AAAAAAAAAgo/gnU7FTTKBbA/s400/small_high.png)
on my Terror Alert Scale.