Sign In: The Historic Signatures on the Walls of Lehman Cave

Tens of thousands of people visit Great Basin National Park every year, many drawn by the chance to go underground in Lehman Cave. Few of them realise that almost every room and passage holds signatures left by visitors since Absalom Lehman opened the cave to the public roughly 130 years before this article was written. Lehman encouraged visitors to sign their names; doing the same today would bring serious legal trouble. Even so, any signature more than 50 years old is generally considered historically significant.

A signature from 1885, by E. W. Meecham and G. R. (George Robison). NPS photo.

What the names record

When researcher David Harwood wrote this, nearly 2,200 signatures, initials and other messages had been found, and several parts of the cave had yet to be documented. Some names appear again and again — repeat visits, or simply the urge to sign every room. Together they can reveal when people visited and explored, how many came in the early years, in which season, in what groups (school trips, parties of friends), and their ages and home towns.

The names were written four ways:

1. Graphite pencil, the most common — easy to carry, and sharpened with a pocket knife.
2. Charcoal, used mainly in 1885 — just as easy to carry, taken from the previous night's campfire.
3. Soot from a candle, or from an oil or carbide lamp, depending on the period.
4. The rarest, writing that weathers into a purple residue: sometimes still legible, sometimes crumbled away to a purple blot.

Who got there first?

More than twenty stories describe how the cave was found, with dates of discovery ranging from 1869 to 1885, and who first explored it is also disputed.

Edwin W. Clay's account. Clay later recalled that a party of seven — men and a boy of about ten — were the first to go beyond the main entrance: himself, Bob Kimball (a contractor), Willard Burbank, Ab Lehman, the boy Ed Lake, Sam Forman, and a seventh person he could no longer name. According to the article, the seventh was his wife, Laura Margaret "Margie" Clay. The party carried charcoal to draw arrows on the walls showing the way out. They did not sign their names that first time but came back later to do so; of the seven, only Bob Kimball's and Sam Forman's names have not been found in the parts of the cave searched so far.

George Thomas Baker's account. Baker named a different first party: himself, Lehman, Dan Simonson, E. W. Clay, William Atkinson, Isaac Gandy, D. A. Gonder, and Philip M. "Doc" Baker with his wife, Nettie.

The earliest date in the cave is July 4, 1885, beside the names of Dan Simonson and Doc Baker and the initials B. M., still unidentified. The next is two days later, July 6, 1885, left by M. J. Fitzuel, George Robison and E. W. Meecham. Other explorers soon added theirs.

Opening the cave

When Lehman opened the cave to visitors in spring 1885, he was still building ladders and ramps and widening passages, with the help of a Mr. Coburn, to make its main rooms easy to reach. Newspapers soon began announcing "Lehman's Wonderful Cave." The name of The Southern Utah Times is written in large letters in the Talus Room beside early 1885 dates, but the first surviving mention of the cave is in the White Pine Reflex, as reported in the White Pine News — both then published in Taylor, Nevada — on April 25, 1885. The White Pine News printed a description of "Lehman's Cave" on October 3, 1885.

Where the names gather

Signatures are everywhere, but some places have many:

• The Crystal Palace, reached by a side passage, was the turnaround point for tours led by Lehman and most others from 1885 to 1892. There Lehman built a platform several feet up one side of the passage so visitors could reach a smooth stretch of wall to write on.
• Nichol's Annex, off the Sunken Gardens.
• The Skating Rink (Inscription Room) and the Talus Room.
• The Music Room, where few people notice the two dozen or so names beside the stairs as they climb.

A cluster of signatures in the Talus Room of Lehman Cave. NPS photo.

Clay's own words describe the first party as men and a boy, which sits uneasily with the article's statement that the person he forgot was his wife; this page reports both.

Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.

Sources

• David Harwood, researcher, "Sign In: The Writing on the Wall," The Midden (Great Basin National Park), vol. 15, no. 1, summer 2015, National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/sign-in-the-writing-on-the-wall.htm