Fictional History
The cave was discovered and used long before by Wayne's ancestors as a storehouse as well as a means of transporting escaped slaves during the Civil War era. The 18th century frontier hero Tomahawk once discovered a gargantuan bat (owned by Morgaine le Fey of Arthurian legend) inside what can be assumed will become the Batcave. Wayne himself rediscovered the caves as a boy when he fell through a dilapidated well on his estate, but he did not consider the cave as a potential base of operations until he rediscovered it yet again when he returned to Gotham to become Batman. Much like Superman's Fortress of Solitude, the Batcave serves as a place of privacy and tranquility.
In earlier versions of the storyline, Bruce Wayne discovered the cave as an adult. In "The Origin of the Batcave" in Detective Comics #205 (March 1954), Batman tells Robin he had no idea the cave existed when he purchased the house they live in. He discovered the cave by accident when testing the floor of an old barn on the rear of the property, and the floor gave way. This story also established that a frontiersman named Jeremy Coe used the cave as a headquarters 300 years earlier. Bruce Wayne discovering the cave as an adult remained the case at least through Who's Who #2 in 1985.
Read more about this topic: Batcave
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