Coopers Cave

The Cooperstown Caves

 

    So much is said and written about the Cooperstown caves, located in Manitowoc county, every summer that we became imbued with sufficient inquisitiveness to go out to see them last Sunday and returned home thoroughly satisfied that the caves and that natural scenery surrounding them are well worthy a visit and the ride of about twenty-five miles.  The caves are situated on the banks of the Neshoto river in the town of  Cooperstown, on the farm of Mr. Aldrich, a very accommodating gentleman and one of the pioneer settlers of that section of Manitowoc county.  The caves are two in number and are located in a cliff of solid rock measuring about sixty feet in height above the river bed.  The entrances to the cavities are about midway between the top and bottom of the cliff and can be easily reached by a series of stone steps or an ascending path leading to them.  They are distinguished by the owner as the large and small cave. The former, he tells us, was explored by him some thirty years ago for a distance of over seventy-five feet since which time it has been more or less filled up on account of pieces of stone falling from the walls and the ceiling, making it now difficult to enter without stooping considerably, the entrance and as far as one can look into it being between three and four feet high.  Two separate rooms each about fifteen feet square in size are located in this cave some distance from the entrance.  The small cave , the owner states, has never been entered beyond a few feet or out of sight of the entrance and how large it is, is not known.  The size of the larger one is also a mystery, it having never been explored beyond a distance of about seventy five or eighty feet.  From Mr. Aldrich we learn that the subterranean cavities were formerly the habitations of wild beasts, he himself having captured several lynx in the vicinity, and one of monstrous proportions of the same species having been shot at the entrance of one of the caves only a few years ago.

    The caves are visited by hundreds of people every summer who go there from far and near, and Mr. Aldrich informed us that he is kept almost busy during the season directing and guiding people to them.  – Kewaunee Enterprise    1889, 8-29

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