Yes, he did, but if I remember correctly, he covered it with dirt (except for the entrance, of course), so it is now an underground cave.
Rod Fritz Holt wrote: > David Bamberger, a Texas conservationist rancher, built an artificial > bat cave on his ranch which I understand is inhabited by bats. > > Fritz > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > From: Rod Goke [mailto:rod.g...@ieee.org] > > Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 8:45 PM > To: Brian Vauter > Cc: texascavers list > Subject: [Texascavers] Aboveground Caves > > Aboveground caves are more common than most people realize. One that > is known to many Texas cavers is the plywood cube maze that was > erected at several Texas Caver Reunions and certain other caver > events. This structure obviously was above ground, and, although it > didn't look much like a natural cave, it was advertised as a "cave" by > the cavers who built it and who crawled around inside it. > > A more realistic looking aboveground cave existed inside a restaurant > in the DenverColorado area, back when I lived their during the early > 1980s. The restaurant served all-you-can-eat Mexican food of a quality > that didn't encourage people to eat very much, but you had to buy a > dinner in order to get in. Its main attraction was a very large > building fixed up like a multi-theme theme park inside. It had > multiple dining areas, each elaborately decorated according to a > different theme. A couple of these areas were very cave-like inside. > From time to time, it was common for Colorado cavers to go there for > an after-dinner evening of pseudocaving in these aboveground caves, > especially during winter, when most of Colorado's underground caves > were inaccessible because of snow. > > An even more realistic artificial cave was built inside > the FloridaStateMuseum in GainesvilleFlorida during the early 1970s, > when I was a student at the University of Florida and was caving with > the Florida Speleological Society (FSS). The museum people building > this artificial cave took great care to make it resemble a real > typical Florida cave as much as they could, including routing the air > conditioning through side passages and regulating the temperature and > humidity to resemble natural air flow in a real Florida cave. > Fortunately, Florida's typical cave temperatures were naturally > comfortable. The museum staff collaborated with FSS cavers and visited > several real Florida caves during the planning of this project. We > were especially impressed with the technique they used for > constructing remarkably realistic artificial formations by applying > many layers of slow setting epoxy, which slowly flowed and dripped as > it set, gradually building up multi-layer coatings resembling the > shapes and surfaces of natural stalactites, stalagmites, and > flowstone. After it was completed, cavers often amused themselves by > photographing inside this artificial cave and slipping the slides into > slide shows of real caves to see if other cavers could notice the > difference. Unless cavers were already familiar with > the FloridaStateMuseum cave, the pictures were often realistic enough > to fool experienced cavers. Technically, the FloridaStateMuseum cave > might have been either aboveground or underground, or perhaps a > combination of both, since the FloridaStateMuseum building was partly > above and partly below ground level. > > If you search hard enough, I bet you can find many more examples of > "aboveground caves". Has anyone ever bothered to compile a list? > > Rod > > Brian Vauter wrote: > >> The caption makes use of the ever popular "underground cave" >> catchphrase used by the press. >> >> I wish just once we could find one of the aboveground caves. That >> would make things so much easier. >>
