Klu Klux Klan Cave Update Info ...

[MONKEYMANN]

HaY...Just curious Kynuttle...are you related to a redheaded guy named freddy...about 40 ish...He was a friend of mine in highschool and I remember him saying that his uncle used to own the cave and that he was found dead.
I was in the cave many years ago before they went and paved a road down into that area...don't know if they developed it...was in the area the other day but didn't have time to go down and look at it...
when I was in highschool I went down there and checked out the cave front to back....
Back then someone had started building a house inside the cave but never completed it...someone had scattered nails on the floor everywhere...don't know why...I was going to do some metal detecting but the nails screwed all that up.
Rumor has it that back during the border wars during the civil war period they had a machine gun mounted to the top of the cave...
there is a couple of areas that are built up over the top area of the cave...one of which had a small hole in it...maybe to mount a pole to...to put a machine gun in "????" probably urban legand.
The cave used to have an old jail door over the smaller entrance...there is a big and small entrance.
there's also a huge tree in the front area of the cave...always wondered if this was the hanging tree???

[Former User #2]

Huh wonder if they were building a house there to hide somthing illegal they were doing?

[Kit]

i think there were a total of 8 or so gatlin guns in the civil war and they werent in MO

[cobcob]

There is however one in the museum at College of the Ozarks

[Kit]

is it one of the ones that was actually used in the civil war or one of the ones purchased by the army afterwards?

[cobcob]

Not sure...
I'm friends with a family member of the fella who donated the collection... I'll email him and see what he knows about it

[cobcob]

Alrighty...
The firearms collection was traded for some real estate back in the 1960's, the guy who took the collection in trade (Ralph Foster) donated the collection to College of the Ozarks.
My buddy doesn't think it's a civil war piece, probably more 1870's or 1880's

[Kit]

i was going to say that would be kick ass if it was actually one of the VERY few that were actually used in the civil war.

[MONKEYMANN]

The story I got was that the cave was guarded with a machine gun or some form of mounted gun up over the top of the cave entrance...of which you can see where something used to be...Now that I stop and think about it maybe it the story was suppose to be that the KKK used to have a gun mounted over the cave to guard it...
That would make more sence...your right...there really wasn't an overwhelming amount of machine guns around during the civil was...maybe after the 1900's..turn of the century but gattling gun would have been all you would have had back then...but who knows...you know how many sides to these stories there are!!

[stuck in the 80's]

the klu klux klan cave you are asking about was used in the civil war to store goods and armory. it does have a place for a gun but it was for a lookout to shoot out of with a rifle. this cave was used for senior parties for years in the 70s n 80s. i went to carl jct n partied there lots up until the early 80s. it has tunnels that go all the way to galena ks which is probably 7-9 miles. i have bn thru most of it.

[Steve]

I remember exploring a cave back in the early to mid 1970s in the Joplin area that I use to go to occasionally that was called the KKK Cave, the main room of the cave was quite large, probably could have parked four Semi Tractors an Trailers in it, it once had a large Iron door big enough to pull in a Semi Truck through in the main entrance but this iron door had long since been removed and all that was left by the 70s was the Iron frame or door faceing that had once surrounded that door, this cave had 2 or 3 smaller openings in other locations, one going up to the top of the hill that this cave was in and that top opening had man-made stone work around it that made it into a roofed “look-out tower” or “gun tower” as it was called back then, there was also an opening that went further back into a connected cavern system that was rumored to connect with another cave opening in the Miami OK. area I don’t know whether this was true or not as the opening to this back passage from the KKK cave was small and would have required one to belly crawl to a point further back in it before it opened up to where one could stand again... and I never ventured back into or explored this part of the cavern further. I recall that although this cave was known and visited by many inquisitive people, one had to know somebody who knew about it to find out its location, it was one of my cousins that had shown me where it was and he always referred to it as the old KKK cave, he even went on to add to the story of connected torture room that had iron rings affixed to the walls in one part of the man-made stone work section that people would be tied to and beaten, there were stains on this “ring” wall that looked like they could have been old blood stains but I don’t know for sure if it was blood or that this part of the stories were even true. I do have several old pictures of this cave somewhere in my photo collections that I took one day while visiting this cave back in the 1974 -76 time frame. I know and have researched a little about the KKK history in the Joplin area and quite frankly... it doesn’t surprise me to hear stories that a “religious leader” now has possession of that property.

[cjfan99]

It has recently been, I found out, transformed for a spook house.

[redox]

it has tunnels that go all the way to galena ks which is probably 7-9 miles..

SAY WHAT?!!!

[mindwaave]

Holy shit.

[Nicotti]

Longest caves in Mo that the MSS currently knows of:
Crevice Cave, Perry County, 28.2 miles
Moore Cave, Perry County, 16.7 miles
Mystery Cave, Perry County, 15.8 miles
Rimstone River Cave, Perry County, 14.2 miles
Carroll Cave, Camden County, 11.3 miles
Powder Mill Creek Cave, Shannon County, 8.8 miles
Devils Icebox, Boone County, 6.6 miles
Piquet Cave, Pulaski County 4.9 miles
Cameron Cave, Marion County 4.6 miles
Meramec Caverns, Franklin County, 4.5 miles