The Van Buren County Historical and Heritage Museum is showing off a new display that tells the Bone Cave Story.
Museum Secretary Justin Aughinbaugh said the story is on display using framed canvas prints. Auginbaugh said the Bone Cave story is a piece of history that the museum was missing.
“The Bone Cave, as we know it today, has about nine miles worth of cave systems in it,” Aughinbaugh said. “And in 1811, when they were mining it for salt here, for gun powder, they came across the remains of the giant ground sloth.”
Aughinbaugh said the remains were one of the first fossils from the big mammals that existed during the ice age that were found in America. Aughinbaugh said he hopes the new display will make it easier for locals and visitors to understand the importance the story has to the county.
“You know, like they have Bone Cave closed up,” Aughinbaugh said. “They do tours sometimes, but they have it closed up on the entrances due to Radon, I’ve heard. But it’s just one of those stories that not enough people know about, and it’s got a huge, you know, paleontological, archaeological even, significance to Van Buren County and to the rest of the world, really.”
Aughinbaugh said he hopes to eventually have some visuals to go along with the story frames.
“This is just the first cornerstone that we are laying for what I want one day to be a really immersive exhibit,” Aughinbaugh said. “You know, where people can go in and maybe map out the tunnel systems a little bit, and show people, like for instance, in Bone Cave, right now, there are old petrified Civil War era minecarts and shafts, and ladders and stuff that have turned to stone due to the conditions of the cave. We want to have, you know, more visuals and more educational content.”
Aughinbaugh said the actual bones of the giant ground sloth are held at Drexel Academy of Natural Sciences in Pennsylvania. Aughinbaugh said he hopes to eventually get a replica of one of the bones to display in the museum.
The Van Buren County Historical and Heritage Museum is open on the first and third Saturdays of each month from 10am-3pm.
