Mammoth Cave National Park in central Kentucky is home to the world’s longest known cave system. The system of chambers and subterranean passageways reflects the park’s extensive and varied history. In 1839, Dr. John Croghan of Louisville, Kentucky, who suffered from tuberculosis, purchased the Mammoth Cave property for $10,000. At a time when minimal medical knowledge of or treatments existed for the “white plague,” a leading cause of death in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Dr. Croghan was interested in the cave in part as a possible sanitarium. Hidden History: Tuberculosis in Mammoth Cave (U.S. National Park Service)
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