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This Woman Inspired One of the First Hit Video Games by Mapping the World’s Longest Cave
Patricia Crowther’s ex-husband coded her cave maps into one of the first hit adventure games in the 1970s, and she had no idea
Claire L. Evans is the author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet.
The longest cave in the world is in central Kentucky. Its limestone passages stretch 400 miles beneath the earth in twisting patterns as intricate as the roots of the ancient hickory forests above. Within, cavers skirt bottomless pits, pass fountains of orange stone, and discover deep, icy subterranean rivers. Between the sunlit world and the depths below, white mist swirls at ankle height, like the breath of ghosts.
Kentuckians have fought bitterly to control access to the secrets of Mammoth Cave. In the early 20th century, hardscrabble locals conned tourists into the sinkholes on their land, spurring “cave wars” that ceased only when the National Parks Department took control, evicting landowners and installing staircases, subterranean toilets, and even a grand dining room 267 feet below ground, its ceiling encrusted with snowballs of gypsum crystal. Serious cavers now enter Mammoth’s wild entrances through locked grates, using keys granted…
