Hidden Stories in Snake Creek Cave's Inscriptions

Written from an article by Brianna Patterson, archaeologist with the Great Basin Institute, first published in The Midden*, Great Basin National Park, Vol. 22, No. 2, Winter 2022.*

Names on the walls

For thousands of years, people have entered caves and left their mark — from rock writing to historic inscriptions. Snake Creek Cave in Great Basin National Park holds more than 200 historic inscriptions. To archaeologists, they're more than names and dates: they're clues to past lives, and telling those stories is at the heart of the work.

Recording them

A small crew of volunteers and one archaeologist began documenting the cave's former explorers. In three hours they recorded 104 inscriptions, dating from 1885 to 1978, including:

• "Kenneth B. Vanda H. 1932 Sweethearts"
• "Francis April 21, 1935 3rd Grade"
• a possible cattle brand, drawn in carbide soot in 1941

The Lopers

Genealogical research by a volunteer connected several inscriptions to one family:

• Bert Loper, born in 1913 in Burbank, Utah, a little over twenty miles away, first entered the cave in 1930 at seventeen, and returned the next year (July 10, 1931) with his thirteen-year-old brother Percy.
• In 1935, Bert moved to Las Vegas to work as a steel cleaner and painter at Hoover Dam. About three months later, on November 17, he was electrocuted on a crane rail in the powerhouse and fell sixty feet to his death.
• The family didn't return for ten years. Then Lavern Loper, fifteen, explored the cave in 1945, and Guy Loper, seventeen, in 1946 — each leaving an inscription like their older brothers.
• In 1951, Percy came back, twenty years after his visit with Bert.

Perhaps the cave, and Bert's name on its wall, became a memorial — a place his siblings could feel close to him.

Leave it as it is

The Lopers' inscriptions and other links to the past must be preserved by leaving them alone — and so must the cave. Caves take millions of years to form, and any inscription, historic or modern, permanently damages them. Old damage can't be undone, but new damage can be prevented.

The research is part of a partnership among the Great Basin Institute, Great Basin National Park and Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, funded by the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, to study and manage wild caves in White Pine County. Thanks go to the volunteers who followed a stranger into a dark hole — and to the one who tracked down the mysterious Bert Loper.

Sources

Based on "Hidden Stories of Snake Creek Cave," by Brianna Patterson, The Midden — Great Basin National Park, Vol. 22, No. 2, Winter 2022, published by the National Park Service and in the public domain; rewritten in hubnx's own words. The author's photographs of the inscriptions are not reproduced.