Though Indiana and Kentucky seem like peaceful lands, full of undulating countryside and endless vistas, back in the late 1700s when the Daniel and Squire Boone boys first came here, they were treacherous areas, full of hostile American Indians who rightly resented the invading frontiersmen.

Of the first eight white men to enter Kentucky, Squire and Daniel were the only two to come out alive – and it was Squire that rescued Daniel.

During one of his forays into southern Indiana in 1790, Squire, being chased by angry Shawnees, discovered the cave and was able to hide there. Feeling a sense of awe about it, he asked his children to bury him there, and so they did when he died in 1815.

After his bones were discovered more than 160 years later, a coffin was shaped out of walnut to hold them in one of the cave’s vaults.

Visitors who descend into the cavern and move through its rooms, past cascading waterfalls where a million gallons of water flow each day, eventually come into a room where the coffin and a tomb stone marker sit in front of a set of bleachers. It is here that the cave guide tells the story of Squire and his caverns.