Rocking the Underground
Is bad-boy caver John Ackerman saving Minnesota caves—or destroying them?
BY GREG BREINING
Photo by Per Breiehagen
(page 2 of 2)
WHEN HE BEGAN CAVING, Ackerman enjoyed exploring Mystery Cave in southeastern Minnesota. But when the Department of Natural Resources bought the cave in 1988 to add it to Forestville State Park, it locked out the cavers. “I think it was an issue of total control,” says Ackerman. “Remember, everybody was new. No one had owned a cave before.” After intense negotiations, the state opened the cave again to occasional exploration, but the dustup foreshadowed Ackerman’s later disputes with various officials over access. The first involved Coldwater Cave in northeastern Iowa. With more than 17 miles of passages, it is one of the preeminent caverns in the Midwest. Divers probing an underwater passage discovered Coldwater in 1967, and state officials drilled an easier and safer entrance, hoping to develop a commercial cave. But when further money for the project never materialized, Iowa officials handed the access rights back to the landowners, who administered entry criteria that many cavers felt were overly strict and arbitrary. A small clique of cavers won the confidence of the landowners, says the U of M’s Alexander, who still conducts research there. But others seeking entry were shut out. In 1995, Ackerman—armed with a diagram of Coldwater—bought 5 acres adjoining the disputed property and the underground rights to 200 more. He hired drillers to bore a shaft 30-inches across and 188 feet straight down into his portion of the cave. The owners of the original entrance, who in one fell swoop had lost their monopoly on access, were incensed.Ackerman would employ a similar tactic four years later, when the owners of Goliath Cave in southeastern Minnesota sold their land to the state to be designated as the Cherry Grove Blind Valley Scientific and Natural Area. (A blind valley is a stream that disappears into a cave.) The DNR promptly closed the cave, ostensibly to protect the cave’s formations. “We made it very clear we weren’t going to be giving out any research permits until we had completed an inventory,” says Bob Djupstrom, then head of the state’s Scientific and Natural Area program. After unfruitful discussions with the DNR, Ackerman talked to the adjoining landowner, who agreed to sell him 2 acres and caving rights to another 360 acres. Then he sunk a new access shaft—directly across the road from the state’s property. The DNR, says Ackerman, “did back flips.” Today, a sign sits outside Ackerman’s access point: “Goliath Cave Site. David’s Entrance.”
The confrontational style tends to obscure Ackerman’s motivation, says Alexander. “I’ve been poking around in holes in the ground for 40 years now,” he says. “I always thought the phrase ‘a rich caver’ was an oxymoron. But John is one. I think a significant component in the problems a lot of people have with him is envy. He has the resources to do a lot of things that other people can’t do. The other thing is, he is a hard-driving explorer. He wants to see things people have never seen before…. There aren’t many places left on earth where you can see something for the very first time.”
But high explosives and a backhoe? A caving code is “a nebulous thing” over which cavers disagree, says the Speleological Survey’s Spong, a long-time spelunker. “Purists” might even refuse to dig out mud and dirt blocking their way. But most cavers would do at least that much. And what is the difference, philosophically speaking, between shoveling dirt and hammering away at an obstruction? If hand tools are okay, why not a power drill, or the use of a small charge of explosives to break off a slab of rock? “You’re already making the first jump toward changing what’s there,” says Spong. “I myself have used explosives.”
Indeed, what is the virtue of keeping a cave pristine and unseen? It’s not as if caves, unlike wilderness areas or wetlands, are in short supply. There are hundreds or thousands underlying the Midwestern karst. Only a fraction of those are open to the public, however.
Late one summer day, Ackerman and I drove to Tyson Spring Cave in Fillmore County. Cavers have known about parts of Tyson Spring for more than a century, but it wasn’t until 1985 that divers were able to swim through two underwater passages that had blocked further exploration. Ackerman was one of those early surveyors, and after purchasing rights to the cave, he—once again—punched through a new entrance. After descending more than a hundred steps into blackness and cold, we alighted at the edge of a tumbling, swift, burbling stream. We clambered over boulders and rapids and waded through pools to our waist, marveling at multi-colored fins and ribbons and entire walls of flowstone. A quarter-mile into the cave, we came to a big chamber and sat down to take in the scene.
As the Minnesota Karst Preserve continues to grow, Ackerman wonders about his legacy: “You build up all of these major caves, but what’s going to happen when I’m gone? Is that next steward going to be as protective of them? Or are they going to go to the extreme and just shut them down completely? You want someone who is watching over them and setting down the guidelines. These can’t be replaced.”
It’s hard to imagine he could find an individual with his interest, drive, and resources to maintain the caves, to keep them accessible, and to protect them from damage. And what club or nonprofit would undertake the expense of maintaining caves and keeping them available when there’s no money to be made? “As I get older, I’m considering what to do with all this,” he says, as the dark river rushes by. “It’s not about the money. It’s about making sure I turn over the reins to somebody that’s going to continue the vision.”
Greg Breining is a frequent contributor to Minnesota Monthly.
