Bower Cave
A Journey from Private to Public Ownership
by Bruce Rogers and Pat Helton
Published: Spring, 2005

Bower Cave is one of the nearly forgotten caves of the Mother Lode. Long known to Native Americans, the cave has also had a convoluted history of use by Euro-Americans, and was the site of one of the first cave dives in the United States.

The cave consists of a collapse sinkhole in marble, nearly 100 feet in both diameter and depth, with a small pool at its bottom. Formerly, a "bower" of maple trees partly canopied this large roofless chamber. Several short, decorated passages can be reached by exciting climbs up the walls. An enormous submerged passage only accessible by cave diving leads over 800 feet into the hillside bordering the Merced River, dropping to at least 240 feet deep. The cave continues inward and downward, but to follow it would require extreme cave diving expertise.

The early human history of the Bower Cave area has been difficult to unravel. At least 3,500 years ago, the area was occupied by people who roamed both the Great Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada foothills. These folks were truly the first California cavers, burying their dead in many other Mother Lode caves. While we know little about their culture, they probably viewed the cave as a "portal to the Otherworld." It is likely that they explored the cave, but left no evidence of their passing.

The northern Mewuk arrived in the area about 1,200 years ago. Though the tribe feared caves, they called this one "Ootins" and considered it to be one of the places from which humans emerged into the world.

The recent history of Bower cave began just after the Gold Rush of 1849. On March 19, 1851, a miner known only as "Shore" went looking for lost horses and reported finding a large spring in a lime deposit along the North Fork of the Merced River. He also mentioned that he found and explored "a very remarkable cave" in the ledge, christening it Marble Springs Cave. (Jean-Nicolas Perlot, a Belgian gold seeker, may have found the cave at about the same time, but his remembrance of dates is somewhat suspect.) Lacking modern vertical gear, Shore shinnied down one of the immense maple trees covering the "Outer Vault," as the collapse sinkhole was called.

A long series of owners, many immigrant Frenchmen and Germans, subsequently bought, commercially developed, and sold the cave over the next 100 years.

Nearly everyone suspected the cave extended underwater, but only brief glimpses were possible of a darkened hole leading down through the pellucid waters. But in March 1953, Jon Lindbergh (son of Charles Lindbergh, the first Trans-Atlantic flyer) brought some new fangled Aqua-Lung gear to Bower Cave. Jon studied at Stanford University and had used Scuba equipment for several years. He’d met Ray deSassure and other members of the now near-mythical Stanford Grotto there and was persuaded to visit Bower Cave. Although the use of Scuba was beginning to be common in open water diving, few dared enter caves. Jon Lindbergh’s dive was the first cave dive in the west (and came shortly after the first US cave dive, in Florida in late 1951.)

Donning his thin "frogman" suit and single air tank, he dove into the frigid waters of the cave. Swimming under a natural bridge of jagged ceiling pendants, Jon swam into the cave some 39 ft., then gradually descended nearly 121 ft. to a mud-covered breakdown floor, then followed his air bubbles up about 65 feet into a blackened void. Breaking the water’s surface, he found himself in a large chamber some 46 ft. in diameter and nearly 60 ft. high, unfortunately without any beach or landing spot. The domed ceiling rose up out of sight. Some 20 feet above the pool, a high ledge was festooned with white stalactites, flowstone, and draperies.

Jon paddled around a bit, then, chilled by the 50^oF water, returned to the Outer Vault. The organizers were delighted, and newspapers ballyhooed his dives across California.

On later dives, Jon, along with Sterling Pierce of the Western Speleological Institute, explored inwards for nearly 350 ft. to a depth of 124 ft. Art Lange used their notes and sketches to draw a detailed block diagram of the cave.

Jon Lindbergh faced a complex series of obstacles in his dives. No one had any idea of the length or depth of the submerged cave passage, and little was known at that time about cave diving in general. He used the best gear he could muster, but still it was ill suited to cave diving. The single tank and regulator were standard scuba issue, though Jon also had a pair of small "bail out" oxygen bottles. Lindbergh used a single electric lantern.

A length of rope tied around Jon’s waist functioned as a return line for exiting the cave: important, since no one knew if sediment might be kicked up, blotting out visibility. The line could also be used for body recovery (politely not discussed at the time), and provided some idea of the length of the passage.

On his second dive into the cave, he carried a small life raft. Upon arrival in the interior chamber, he pulled the inflation cord and the raft ballooned up like a sausage, as the carbon dioxide bottle was meant for a raft twice this size. Jon realized this as he surfaced and frantically valved off "quite a bit of pressure," hoping the raft wouldn’t explode.

He returned to the Outer Vault to warm up, then dove into the lake again, this time with a camera and flashgun wrapped in plastic bags. He awkwardly climbed into the raft—no mean feat in the darkness. Unfortunately, he also shipped a great deal of water into the raft, and ripped a large hole in his suit. He used his mask to bail the boat until the thin glass faceplate broke in two, and then unlimbered his camera gear and proceeded to take nearly a whole roll of black-and-white photographs. This done, he rewrapped the camera and photoflash gun, geared up, and started back. He felt a bit dizzy from nitrogen narcosis and cold due to the hole in his suit. Grasping his photo bag and holding his nose (remember that broken mask?), he calmly swam back out into the light.

After one last dive to retrieve the raft, Bower Cave lapsed into obscurity. Despite closure in 1955 (due to the demise of an unauthorized visitor who got too close to the sinkhole edge and fell to his death) more dive attempts were made by Cave Research Associates and the Stockton Sport Divers in the late 1960s, but little came of them.

Enthralled by Jon’s discoveries, cave owner James Rice wanted to make the hidden chamber accessible to visitors. His scheme of pumping out the cave was scrapped after it was politely pointed out he would have to lower the regional water table. He then suggested blasting a low tunnel into Lindberghs Room, but fortunately this plan never came to fruition.

In 1969, a San Francisco Bay Area group became interested in diving Lilburn Cave in Kings Canyon National Park. Though they were highly experienced ocean divers, they lacked experience diving in caves. I suggested they first train in Bower Cave. During the next four years, the Bower Cave Diving Group (BCDG, as I christened them) plumbed the frigid depths of the cave on a bi-weekly basis, pushing the limits of Bower Cave and their gear.

They found a huge passage beyond Lindberghs Room nearly 100 feet in diameter that sloped down to the east. Piles of slabby breakdown were scattered over the silty floor and a clutter of artifacts, including old ale and champagne bottles, cascaded down from the shoreline. One still-sealed ale bottle was retrieved and a diver volunteered to sample it. The bottle was carefully cleaned, the stopper gingerly removed, and, with a grand flourish, the diver quaffed a mouthful of California’s best ale of 1880... and immediately spat out the vile-tasting fluid.

The BCDG decided to make a movie on Super-8 film, the best they could afford. That type of film required lots of light, so a rig was concocted using a 12-volt auto-mobile headlight and needing vast amounts of amperage. We christened it "The Water Heater," and sealed the mighty battery pack into a large aluminum cylinder attached between the diver’s twin air tanks.

On its initial use, the diver plummeted to the bottom in a flurry of bubbles, and lay flailing about like an upended beetle. Upon hauling him up, we were astounded to find that the rig weighed over 180 pounds. But the Water Heater did give a tremendous amount of light and gave the divers some idea of the size of the cave. And true to its name, divers could toast their hands nearly a foot away from the lens (even through wetsuit gloves.) Their film, by the way, garnered several awards.

The BCDG also discovered four more air pockets along the tunnel-like passage. The small pocket just beyond Lindberghs Room was decorated with two large shields and patches of helictites. The shields were partly submerged, indicating a lower water level sometime in the past. Attempts to climb the walls of Lindberghs Room were made, all ending in spectacular splashes back into the pool. Unfortunately, no cameras recorded these fountaining water belays.

The group found, to its dismay, that the water was grossly polluted with "sewage-type coliform bacteria." Several trips were cut short due to the entire team having extreme lower GI tract distress and having only one restroom.

Extreme depth, frigid waters, and the limitations of compressed air diving eventually halted progress at 1,387 feet of passage at a depth just over 262 feet. In addition to a wealth of artifacts strewn along the bottom of the Outer Vault, a troglobitic amphipod—Stygobromus wengerorum (Wenger’s Cave Amphipod) was found. This amphipod is listed as a California "Special Animal" and was formerly a Category 2 candidate for federal endangered species status before the C2 list was eliminated by the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1996.

After BCDG moved on to diving Lilburn Cave, the bats, salamanders, and cryptic invertebrates had Bower Cave mostly to themselves for almost 17 years.

In February of 1981, the property was sold to Jack Linkletter (son of entertainer Art Linkletter) and his wife Barbara. Jack was an avid diver, and the following year, with a party of Mariposa County Sheriff’s Deputies, dove as far as the portal to Lindberghs Room. They knocked loose great amounts of silt that nearly blotted out their vision. "It got a little scary down there. For a while I couldn’t see. It was very disorienting," remarked Jack. The group was cool-headed but overwhelmed by the immensity of the cave. By 1983, Linkletter had decided to sell the land, but didn’t want the ranch and cave to be developed for summer resorts or made into an underwater Disneyland for sport divers. He began negotiations with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) to transfer ownership to them.

In April of 1990, the loosely affiliated "Friends of Bower Cave" held a fundraiser to purchase Bower Cave and give it to the USFS. Nearly 300 people ran amuck on the tract, trampling the grounds. Entertainment of "old time music by Sorenson’s Cave Dwellers" was a picnic highlight.

Today the cave quietly slumbers. Since its purchase by the USFS in 1991, Bower Cave has been managed in a "benign neglect" mode, with permission to view the entrance sinkhole readily given by the District Office. In reality, few apply; but then, few know of the cave’s existence. Once again the squirrels and bats have free reign of Ootins, and little has changed since old "Shore" first shinnied down a tree trunk over 150 years ago.