Sinks of Gandy

The Sinks of Gandy, also called the Sinks of Gandy Creek, or simply “The Sinks” are a modestly celebrated cave and underground stream at Osceola in eastern Randolph County, West Virginia, USA. The Sinks are on private property within the Potomac Ranger District of the Monongahela National Forest.

Description

The Sinks are a natural tunnel accommodating Gandy Creek, a tributary of Dry Fork, for about 3,000 feet (915 meters) as it passes under a spur of Yokum Knob to reemerge on the opposite side of West Virginia Route 40 (Dry Fork Road). The southern (upsteam) entrance to the Sinks, about 30 feet wide and 15 feet high, is in a low ledge of limestone in a large depressed meadow. It consists of a simple longitudinal passage, from 4 to 35 feet high, with a few minor side passages, not much apparent from the main passage. The main cave passage averages 40 to 60 feet wide, but in some places up to 100 feet wide. In some sections the stream occupies the entire floor of the passage, but in other sections it is confined to a narrow trench. The northern (downsteam) entrance is offset about 100 feet to the east of the stream channel, which exits under some boulders, making a second (wet) avenue of egress [Davies, William E. (1958), "Caverns of West Virginia", 2nd edition, Volume XIX(A) of the "West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey", Beckley, West Virginia: Biggs-Johnson-Withrow, pp 312-314. Includes photo and 1940 map.] .

History

Local settlers were certainly well aware of the Sinks by the 1830s. The earliest recorded reference to the Sinks may be a November 1833 letter sent by Randolph County physician Benjamin Dolbeare to the Virginia Historical and Philosophical Society in Richmond. Dolbeare described several local caves including one as follows (with original spellings).

"Between, what is here called, the Aleghany and Rich Mountains, heads a branch of the dry fork a tributary of Cheat River, a ridge extends itself quiet across, from one mountain to the other, and this branc [h] , after keeping its course about 3 miles runs under this ridge which [is] about ¾ of mile wide at its base, and very high." [Rachal, William M. E., editor, “Early Records of the Virginia Historical Society, 1831-1833” in "Virginia Magazine of History and Biography", January 1959; v. 67, pp 25-26. (Cited in Taylor, John Craft, “The Early History of Pendleton County [sic] Caves, 1760 to 1860”, pp 42-59 in Dasher, George R. (2001), Bulletin #15, "The Caves and Karst of Pendleton County", West Virginia Speleological Survey; ISBN 0-9620636-2-2). ]

The Sinks were noted locally as the site of the last known killings of elk by hunters in what is now Randolph County, probably about 1830 and 1835 [cite book | author = Maxwell, Hu| title = The History of Randolph County, West Virginia, From its Earliest Settlement to the Present, The Acme Publishing Company, Morgantown, W.Va. (Reprinted, McClain Printing Company, Parsons, W.Va., 1961)| year = 1898| pages = 299] . (The last elk killed in all of West Virginia were shot around 1843 in nearby Canaan Valley.)

In March 1864, a minor incident of the Civil War occurred at the Sinks. Eight men of General Imboden’s Confederate command, who had been waylaying wagon trains in the north, crossed into neighboring Tucker County where they robbed a general store about 3 miles from the town of Saint George. They were pursued by a Union captain and lieutenant who closed on them the next day at the Sinks. Three rebels were killed in the ensuing shootout, two captured and the stolen property recovered [Maxwell, "Op. cit.", pg 165] .

The Sinks first came to widespread public notice by way of a tongue-in-cheek account of a pleasure expedition to the region published by David Hunter Strother in "Harper’s Magazine" in 1872 and 1873 [Strother, David Hunter, "The Mountains", "Harper's New Monthly Magazine", 45:358-361, 812, August 1872; and 46:669-675, 1873.] , although the visit upon which it is based probably occurred around 1854 [Eby, Jr., Cecil D. (1960), "Porte Crayon": The Life of David Hunter Strother", University of North Carolina Press.] . This story, entitled "The Mountains", details the high jinx of a group of lively “Virginia gentlemen” who bumble through the then-virgin forest, annoying the sullen local “mountaineers”, in search of the “tunnel of Gandy”. This semi-fictionalized narrative treated the locals in rather xenophobic terms and recounted a lurid tale of cattle rustling, abduction and desperate escape in the cave and the surrounding area.

The Sinks again became the object of a popularization effort when West Virginia writer Jack Preble published a series of articles and booklets about them between the 1940s and the 1960s. Preble’s anecdotal and romanticizing approach was little more reliable than Strother’s at giving an accurate account of the cave. It was also during this period that the West Virginia Highway Department began, with an eye toward the tourist potential, to replace the designation of “Osceola” with that of “The Sinks” on its official roadmaps. [Preble, Jack, "Ibinthruthesinks Club", "Pocahontas (W.Va.) Times", 19 Sept 1940 (Reprinted in "Bulletin of the National Speleological Society, No. 3, pp 21-22).] [Preble, Jack, "Land of Canaan: Plain Tales from the Mountains of West Virginia", Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Printing Company, 1st ed., 1960; 2nd ed., 1965, 3rd ed., 1971, pp 61-92. Reprints the relevant portion of Strother’s "The Mountains" from 1872-73.] [Preble, Jack, "The Sinks of Gandy Creek", Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Printing Company, 1969 (26 page booklet).]

The Sinks were first formally surveyed and mapped by members of the National Speleological Society on 1 September 1940 resulting in a figure of 3,056 feet of passage [Medville, Douglas and Hazel E. Medville, compilers and editors, (1971), Bulletin #1, "Caves of Randolph County", West Virginia Speleological Survey, pp 151-153] . The cave was resurveyed in 1990 resulting in 5,058 additional feet for a total of 8,114 feet of passage. [Medville, Douglas M. and Hazel E. Medville, (1995), Bulletin #13, "Caves and Karst of Randolph County", West Virginia Speleological Survey, pp 148-149.] This makes the Sinks the 627th longest surveyed cave in the U.S. as of 17 March 2008 [National Speleological Society, [http://www.caverbob.com/usalong.htm Geo2 Committee on Long and Deep Caves] ]

Amateur appeal

Both entrances to the Sinks are located on private land. The upstream entrance is owned by the Teter family and the downstream exit is owned by the Tingler family. [Owners noted by the [http://www.wvhighlands.org/wv_voice/?p=15 West Virginia Highlands Conservatory] ] The location of the cave is not identified by any signage in the area.

Because of the straightforward layout of the cave, most visitors can traverse it safely with simple household flashlights. A combination of scrambling and wading are required to pass some stretches, however, and many a visitor cannot locate the dry, downstream entrance (about 200 feet back and to the right from the wet stream exit) and is therefore compelled to return the way he came.

References

Citations

Other sources

*McGrew, Wes, " Netherworld News", September 1959.
*Perry, Clay, “Come Let’s Go Spelunking”, "Saturday Evening Post", pp. 14-15, 36, 38; 12 July 1941.
*Sanford, Dick, " The Potomac Caver", March 1969.

External links

* [http://www.speleogenesis.info/archive/sg2/White/img/SG2_White_basins_f4.gifMaps of the Sinks and environs at "Speleogenesis" website]
*Geolinks-US-streetscale|38.714749|-79.642553