Unearthing the Truth: Historian Roger Brucker on Floyd Collins and the Legacy of a Legend

For a century, the story of Floyd Collins has captivated historians. A cave explorer in early 20th-century Kentucky, Collins inadvertently became a national sensation in 1925 when he became trapped in Sand Cave, setting off a massive—but ultimately futile—rescue operation. His tragic ordeal was covered by an enterprising young reporter named William “Skeets” Miller, whose vivid and empathetic dispatches turned the event into one of the first media frenzies of the modern era.

Few people have explored this haunting tale as thoroughly as Roger Brucker. A cave explorer and historian, Brucker has spent decades uncovering the truths behind Collins’s entrapment and the efforts to save him. His book Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins, co-authored with Robert K. Murray, remains the definitive account of the incident, meticulously reconstructing both the physical and human dimensions of the tragedy. Brucker himself has ventured into Sand Cave multiple times, making him one of the very few people still alive to have experienced the claustrophobic horror Collins endured, and had personal encounters with people like Skeets Miller and Floyd’s tireless brother, Homer Collins.

Now, as Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s acclaimed musical Floyd Collins returns to the stage at Lincoln Center Theater, Brucker’s insights into the real-life events behind the legend are more relevant than ever. In this new interview, the 95-year-old Brucker shares his personal journey with Floyd Collins and his family, the challenges of exploring Sand Cave, and reflects on how Collins’s plight reshaped caving and rescue techniques.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

When did you first discover the story of Floyd Collins?
My first introduction to Floyd Collins was in 1942, when my mother took me to Mammoth Cave, and I saw a poster on a telephone pole saying, “Floyd Collins’ Crystal Cave.” And I said, “I want to see that.” And she said, “No, I don’t think so. He died in that cave.” I didn’t get to see the cave.

After I was 21, I wrote a couple of chapters in several books about Floyd Collins, looking up things that had already been published, and at the same time, getting all kinds of curiosity about what really happened, because I felt that what I was reading about Floyd was lacking in some things that I knew as a cave explorer.

Like what?
Well, very few people described the cave because very few people went in the cave. Homer Collins went in the cave. Johnnie Gerald went in the cave. And Skeets Miller went into the cave. But that was about all. The cave was small and not very many people would fit. Certainly not any big people. So, I wanted to know about the cave.

I made six trips into the cave with other explorers. I first went in in about 1979, and we made a very carefully surveyed map. The cave, to me, was a kind of a Rosetta Stone. In other words, I could tell from seeing the actual cave who was telling the truth, who was exaggerating, and who was telling lies about it.

What was it like to be in the cave?
I have been far out in caves, eight hours before you get to the place where you want to survey, and then 10 hours back to where you started. I’ve been in caves for 70 years. This was the scariest cave I ever have been in. This was like going in the kneehole of a kneehole desk. It’s small. And it’s muddy. Unlike limestone caves, which are dissolved out of solid limestone, Sand Cave is through a breakdown which is cemented by mud. While you’re crawling on your belly through this tight place, rocks are coming down on your back. It’s really unstable. That’s quite scary.

So, you can understand how Floyd Collins got trapped.
Yes, indeed. It had to be a horror because even the few people who could reach him couldn’t move their arms around and swing tools or anything like that. It was just too tight. There wasn’t much room to work in there, let alone rescue somebody.

Tell me about Homer Collins, his brother, in the aftermath of Floyd’s discovery.
Immediately after it was discovered that Floyd was dead, he went on the Vaudeville stage, mainly in Louisville, Kentucky, to raise money to hire some miners to dig a lateral tunnel and remove Floyd’s body. That was in April, after the February pronouncement that he was dead. Bob Murray and I spoke to Homer for about two hours on his front porch in Horse Cave, Kentucky. By that point, he had become a character.

You also spent time with Skeets Miller for firsthand information.
Yes. I spent one week in Crystal Cave with Skeets Miller, and then after I had written the book with Bob Murray, I visited Skeets at his farm to show him the manuscript.

What was he like?
Skeets Miller was one of the most empathetic persons I ever met in my life. He did confess to me both at the time I spent with him in Crystal Cave in 1954 and afterwards that he had nightmares over the Floyd Collins episode. He said he was sure he could have done something to free Floyd, and he didn’t know what it was. Now, after we did the research, I assured him there was nothing that he could have done that he didn’t do.

What did Skeets tell you about going in the cave itself?
He was one of the early people to arrive on the scene. He encountered Homer Collins, who was sitting outside having just come out of the cave, and he said, “How’s your brother? Is he dead?” And Homer was kind of pissed off at the moment and said, “If you’re so curious, you could go see.” He was in his overcoat and Homer gave him a flashlight to use.

I’m sure when he plunged into the cave, he had no idea what was going on and must have been scared out of his wits. You had to get down on your belly very soon after entering the cave and wriggle through liquid mud to get about 100 feet into the cave. And then you were confronted by a slide downward at a steeper angle. And Skeets Miller decided to go down there headfirst.

When he got to the bottom of it, he realized that he had landed on Floyd Collins’s head. He dropped the flashlight and he had to feel around in the pitch black for it. Floyd groaned and then he gradually went back up this slanted chute, until he could turn around and come down feet first. And he was careful not to step on Floyd’s head.

He talked to him a little because Floyd was not loquacious, but he was conscious at the time. And that’s when Skeets came back out and filed a report that not only told people what Floyd Collins was experiencing and how helpless he looked, but he described his own feeling of horror and astonishment at this whole thing.

That was a time when the Associated Press was already well-established, but the AP wire was kind of a brand-new service. Consequently, the Courier-Journal put on the wire Skeets Miller’s report. His assessment of the situation soon was in every paper in the United States that subscribed to the AP. His empathy, I believe, was what propelled this story to the front page of every paper.

In your view, was there ever a realistic chance of saving Floyd Collins back then, or was he a goner from the second he got stuck?
In my view, he was desperately stuck, partly because of decisions that were made by various people during the rescue attempt. The engineer, Henry St. George Tucker Carmichael, decreed that no pneumatic tools would be used in the shaft that he was digging. No dynamite or anything like that, because he said it would bring the whole shaft down on Floyd and kill him. So those two decisions, I think, doomed Floyd to not being rescued.

Do you think modern rescue efforts would have been more successful in getting him out?
Yes. The legacy of Floyd Collins being trapped at a time when nobody knew anything about rescuing people in a cave is that today, there’s an acute awareness of the fact that speed is necessary to get to people who are in danger or emergencies.

Now, there are trained rescue teams of cavers all over the country, and they regularly attend training sessions in the various skills necessary to rescue people. These include transporting people long distances, getting people out of tight places, emergency medicine, bringing in heaters to warm up the cave and prevent hypothermia, that sort of thing.

Very early on after [the Floyd Collins incident], cave explorers adopted hard hats, such as miners wear. They began to be concerned about the equipment they used. They began to formulate rules, such as always tell people where you’re going, and never cave alone, which was one of the problems of Floyd Collins.

Today, cavers realize it’s risky. Caving is done voluntarily. It’s like bicycle riding. It’s mostly recreational. But the risks are very real.