Newton County official thinks he's found lost Civil War cave

NEOSHO, Mo. -- The stalactite on a shelf in city manager Jim Cole's office is possibly a reminder that there's more to Neosho's history than what lies on the surface.

The stalactite came from a small cavern found in Big Spring Park, west of the square, but there's a bigger cave down there. And, after a search of more than two decades, Cole believes he's finally found it.

"There's no question in my mind that it's there," he said. "There is definitely a cave that was used during the Civil War in Neosho."

Cole, who has worked for the city for 29 years, said he first heard of the cave when he transferred from the wastewater department to the city manager's office.

He learned of the Abbott Brothers Trust, which was created in 1938. It left Big Spring Park to the city along with $40,000 toward its upkeep, a 147-acre farm in Oklahoma and a building on West Spring Street. The wording of the trust also mentioned the existence of a cave in the southeast corner of the park.

"The request was to find it, clean it out and open it up to the public," Cole said. "I thought that it would be a six-month deal, but it's been 23 years."

He said he has visited with hundreds of people with longtime ties to the area and followed up on as many leads.

One story that he pieced together from his search for information says Union army scouts discovered that a number of soldiers sympathetic to the Confederate cause were hiding out in the cave. It was blasted shut, trapping them inside.

It's that story that may have led to some resistance in locating the cave's exact location, Cole said.

"I think that there are people here in Neosho who know where it is, but their feeling is that we'd be opening up a graveyard," he said.

May have escaped

But Cole doesn't believe that is the case.

If what he's learned over the years is correct, the cavern has numerous tunnels that could have allowed the soldiers to escape.

He points to another tale he's heard, in which Union soldiers surrounded a Neosho house where six Confederate soldiers were taking refuge and then set fire to it. Later, when they went to recover the bodies, they found that all the men had escaped through a cave tunnel below the home.

During slow times, Cole said, crews from the city's public works department have used a backhoe to dig in areas where he thought the cave might be. He took a number of. photographs, as well as the stalactite, from a smaller cave found in the park, but it was not the big one he has sought.

His efforts may have finally paid off.

He said that Kevin Mickus, a geology professor at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, recently brought a gravity meter to Neosho to help Cole in his search. A gravity meter measures the gravitational attraction of the Earth, which varies with the density of rocks in the vicinity.

They located what appears to be the main cavern near the east side of Central Elementary School's playground area.