The Cave:
Dead Man’s Cave has long been considered one of Connecticut’s
more compelling caves. Located in
Hamden, the cave is considerably large, as it descends twenty-five feet from
the entrance. Besides the cavernous
setting of Dead Man’s Cave, this hollow is reputed to have acquired more
mysteries and local myths than any other cave in the New England area. What
truly sets this cave apart from the others is the antique graffiti that derives
from the 1920s; that and the supposed tragic death of P.T. Barnum’s nephew,
Edward, who is rumored to have met his end inside the cave in the 1870s.
How to get to the cave:
Dead Man’s Cave is located within Sleeping Giant Park, 200
Mt. Carmel Ave., Hamden, CT. This address will lead you to a parking lot
located on the south side of the park.
At this entrance you can find a placard which contains maps detailing an
assortment of trailheads. While there
are many ways to get to Dead Man’s Cave, the yellow blazed trail can be seen as
a more preferable route to get to the green-yellow blazed trail. This is because while none of the trails at
the start of your journey will directly lead to the cave, the yellow blazed
trail will lead you to an intersection containing the green trail which is a
mere fifty feet from the entrance to the cave.
This means it would be just a short boulder scramble up to the cave
itself. The mile hike on the yellow
trail does have a challenging elevation gain of six hundred feet, yet it is
much more rewarding than alternately taking the paved path located at the same
starting point. The paved path while
still in close relation to the cave is an alternate route going a little
farther away that will direct you to a tower previously known to be a building
belonging to the Works Progress Association in the 1930s.
Exploring
the cave:
The entrance to the cave is a low hanging triangular opening
that runs parallel to the mountain side.
Because of the shape of this entrance you may be forced to crouch upon
entering. The entrance to Dead Man’s Cave
is 1 foot 8 inches wide by 9 feet 8 inches high, yet despite this you will
notice that the ceiling quickly descends to a 5 foot 8 inch height. After the slope in the ceiling, you will come
across the cave’s first drop. This initial drop has a sloping adjacent wall
which you may find easy to do a crab walk across and then lower your body down
into the second chamber. This
compartment is 13 feet 2 inches long and is at times is as narrow as 1 foot 2
inches and as low as 2 feet 10 inches.
It is a short tubular level and roughly four to five people could fit
inside it, but those people would find it nearly impossible to move around each
other freely.
The second drop in Dead Man’s Cave is a much more
challenging drop with no convenient walls to assist you on the descent. The drop itself is only 6 feet 11 inches, but
at the bottom there lays a precariously placed rock that could easily twist an
ankle or otherwise disrupt your way down.
However, this drop does lead to a second chamber that is more spacious
than the first and comes with the option to either go left or right. To choose the left side would require some
more boulder scrambling which leads to what appears to be a dead end. This is
not in fact a dead end; rather it contains a small, hidden opening that
connects to another part of the cave.
Alternatively, to choose the right side you would come across a fallen
rock that appears to block the path into the next room. The rock is a little more than 4 feet long
and can easily be passed by going underneath it even though it only has a 1 foot
clearance. To pass this fallen boulder
the best option would be to shimmy past on your stomach or back to continue
into the next room. While the broken
glass may persuade you to try to go over the fallen rock, it is in fact much
easier to go underneath it because you are much more likely to become stuck over
the top.
The third and seemingly last room is much smaller than the
second, but despite its size this chamber is home to some of the most
impressive graffiti—as depicted in the pictures below. While it is nearly impossible for one to actually
age these markings, one could make an educated guess based on the dates upon
the wall, written in candle wax, indicating years in the 1920s as the date(s)
of origin. At the top of this chamber
there is a small opening that is roughly a foot in diameter. This, as you will discover, shows that this
is not in fact the last chamber; but leads you through about 20 feet of small
twists and turns that ends in the same room of the left choice of the second
chamber. While this is not necessarily a
new room, it is a new path that leads to the left option which is not the way
you would have chosen to come across this path.
Therefore, the left seems like a new room because you would not have
previously been here. This extra path that loops back is on the smaller side
and some may find that it is difficult or even impossible to travel.
A last but noteworthy observation in Dead Man’s Cave is the
small crucifix that is covered in graffiti located in that small tunnel that
connect the left option with the last chamber.
It is shocking to see the effort someone else went through to put
something of this significance in a place that is so complicated to get to.
Myth of the cave:
“Essentially,
on Good Friday in 1873, a pair of boys went up to the
mountain to look for what was then called Abraham’s Cave — an impressive hollow
on the “left hip” of the giant, large enough to hold a dozen men. When the boys
got to the cave, however, rather than find old Abraham, they found … well, a
dead man. The badly decomposed corpse’s identity was a mystery for a time
before authorities were finally able to determine that the dead man was Edward
Barnum, a nephew of the legendary P.T. Barnum”.
Campbell, Susan, et al. Connecticut
Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff. Curiosities Series, third
ed., Globe Pequot Press, 2010.
