"It is official!" declared the Deseret News in the 1957 story. Neff Cave, located in the Wasatch Mountains above Olympus Cove was the deepest in the United States, at 1,186 feet.
The National Speleological Society made the announcement based on thorough exploration of the cave the previous year by six Salt Lake men who fol-lowed the cavern from opening to floor, mapping and detailing their observations.Official it may have been for the moment, but time and further cave explorations have dropped Neff from first to fifth deepest in the country. A second thorough examination of the cave, in fact, actually reduced the official depth to 1,170 feet.
Most Utahns probably don't know Neff Cave exists. The cave is dangerous and holds little attraction for anyone except inveterate spelunkers, according to Dale Green, a Salt Lake caver who was with the 1956 group.
Unlike Timpanogos, there are no spectacular draperies, stalactites, stalagmites, popcorn formations or other attractions to make it a tourist site. It is icy cold, with constantly dripping walls and ceilings and a slimy surface where rock and water mix.
The entrance was barricaded by the National Forest Service after a 1965 disaster involving a California student. The cave can be explored only by experienced spelunkers who have NFS permission.
During the 1950s and 1960s, however, the Wasatch cave generated headlines, including the harrowing experience of the young University of California caver who was stranded on ledges in the cave for 36 hours after exhaustion overcame him.
Jim Cowling, 23, had come to Utah with two companions in 1965 during a Memorial Day break from the university. They descended to the bottom of the cave, taking photos en route, and were returning to the surface when Cowling began to suffer from exhaustion near the top of a sheer ledge.
For eight hours he dangled from his harness before the other two could work their way down to him. They lowered him to another ledge and left him tied there while they went for help.
The rescue effort involved about 40 Salt Lake County deputy sheriffs and the best local cavers who could be assembled in a hurry, including Green. A base camp was set up and four-wheel drive vehicles carried rescuers as close to the cave as they could get.
A physician was summoned to administer a tranquilizer to make it easier to maneuver the young man through narrow passageways lined with sharp edges of shale that ripped the sleeping bag in which he had been placed. The constant dripping of water in the 40-degree darkness made it a miserable, muddy challenge.
When he was finally retrieved from the ledge 600 feet below the surface, Cowling was unconscious and in critical condition. A few days later, a Deseret News staff writer followed through and found Cowling "soured on the deepest cave in North America," even though he said he would continue spelunking.
"It isn't a sight-seeing cave," Cowling said. "It's the kind you go into to see if you can get to the bottom and come back out again."
In his case, the getting out part came none too soon, he acknowledged.
Then-Salt Lake County Commissioner John Preston Creer called for a permanent, locked covering for Neff and it became a federal offense to enter the cave without Forest Service permission.
Alexis Kelner, one of the first of the local spelunkers to reach Cowling, later wrote an article about the cave for a Utah sports magazine.
He had not been able to determine who first discovered the cave after Salt Lake Valley was settled by Mormon pioneers, he wrote. Whomever it was, he left behind a cumbersome wooden ladder when he decided the cave was beyond his abilities - or desires. The ladder's remains were found by later spelunkers.
In the 1950s, a group of five University of Utah freshmen decided to see what lay beyond the first precipice of the cave, Kelner wrote. Three of them descended to the Great Pit, as it was later named. Two remained outside the cave, intending to help pull their companions up along the steeply inclined passage with a rope.
When the group underground dislodged a boulder, those on top heard it crashing its way down the cave passageway and concluded the worst. Thinking their friends were in trouble, they hurried off to find help. When those still in the cave got back to the dangling rope and called for assistance, they received no answer. They couldn't climb the rope because it was slippery from the cave's leaky atmosphere. They later recounted telling jokes and singing songs as they waited rescue.
Sixteen hours later, they were pulled from the hole and greeted by large numbers of deputy sheriffs, prison trustees, photographers and others who were just plain curious. It was, they declared, the end of their forays into Neff Cave.
In 1952, Dr. William R. Hal-li-day, then an intern at a Salt Lake hospital, led a reconaissance group into the cave to gather geological specimens and make scientific observations. At one point, the passage was so narrow that they had to take off their jackets to get through. They did not go to the bottom because they lacked both time and equipment.
A year later, another group went beyond the first but again stopped short of the botton. Six months later, they returned and in 14 hours reached the bottom, where they discovered a subterranean river.
"It was just like climbing the Grand Teton - in reverse," reported Harold Goodro, a member of the group.
Shortly afterward, the Deseret News editorialized on the dangers of the cave, advising that it be sealed as being of "no value."
The Salt Lake Tribune disagreed, saying "it may yet prove useful, most useful" even if only for a refuge in the case of nuclear war - a pervasive fear in that era.
The October 1956 explorations finally defined the cave more thoroughly and found it to be much less deep than had been estimated by early explorers, who reported it to be up to 2,000 feet deep.
The 1957 clipping announcing Neff to be the deepest cave in the United States was the last in the Deseret News file. The general public lost interest in the cave. But National Forest Service ranger Mike Sieg told the Deseret News there still are occasional requests by experienced local cavers for entry into the mountain cavern.
They can always say they've been in the fifth deepest cave in the country.