History
About 450 million years ago sedimentary rocks were deposited as the land was covered intermittently by shallow seas that ingressed and regressed. Over the eons the alternating deposits of mud and oceanic debris were compressed to form limestone, shale and sandstone layers. Today, these layers are 1,300 feet (400 m) above sea level. Within the last 500,000-one million years, flood waters dissolved along fractures in the limestone bedrock to create most of the cave. Acidic rainwater also sculpted the land above and around the cave, creating thousands of sinkholes and other karst features in the county where the cave is located.
Read more about this topic: Forestville Mystery Cave State Park
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“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)