Stephen Bishop (cave Explorer)

Stephen Bishop (cave Explorer)

Stephen Bishop (1820?–1857) was a mixed race slave (freed by manumission in the year before his death) famous for being one of the lead explorers and guides to the Mammoth Cave in the U.S. state of Kentucky.

Stephen Bishop was introduced to Mammoth Cave in 1838 by his owner, Franklin Gorin (1798–1877), who purchased the cave from the previous owners in the spring of 1838. Gorin wrote, after Bishop's death:

"I placed a guide in the cave --- the celebrated and great Stephen, and he aided in making the discoveries. He was the first person who ever crossed the Bottomless Pit, and he, myself and another person whose name I have forgotten were the only persons ever at the bottom of Gorin's Dome to my knowledge. "After Stephen crossed the Bottomless Pit, we discovered all that part of the cave now known beyond that point. Previous to those discoveries, all interest centered in what is known as the "Old Cave" . . . but now many of the points are but little known, although as Stephen was wont to say, they were 'grand, gloomy and peculiar.' "Stephen was a self-educated man. He had a fine genius, a great fund of wit and humor, some little knowledge of Latin and Greek, and much knowledge of geology, but his great talent was a knowledge of man."