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But on January 30, 1925, Collins' luck ran out, Murphy's Law* took over and the fertilizer began to traverse the ventilator. That morning, Floyd decided to explore Sand Cave. The first seventy feet were tight but simple enough: the cave was wide enough to scoot or slide through. Then it narrowed to a smaller crack. That might have stopped many spelunkers, but not Floyd. He believed he could get himself out of any cave, epecially if it meant a profit for himself and his family.
Relatives eventually noticed that Floyd was missing. A quick check of his latest hangout confirmed the worst. A group of friends and relatives trundled to the cave, found him the next day and gave him some crackers. Then rescue efforts began in earnest.
st true-life soap opera played out, over the airwaves. It may have been America's 1st "Reality Show".
During this saga, a skinny, 19YO reporter William Burke "Skeets" Miller of the Louisville, Ky., Courier-Journal began reporting on the rescue efforts from the scene. Miller also talked with and interviewed Collins in the cave
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The next day, the Courier Pulitzer Prize for his coverage.
Miller's reports were distributed by telegraph and printed by newspapers around the country and abroad. The rescue attempts were followed by regular news bulletins on the new medium of broadcast radio (the first broadcast radio station KDKA having been established in 1920). Fifty reporters from 16 different cities set up camp at Sand Cave. Film crews from 6 studios came to cover the event.
Shortly after the media arrived, the publicity drew crowds of tourists to the site, at one point numbering in the tens of thousands. On Sunday, his family offered a $500 reward for anyone who could free Floyd.
Picture this: Vendors, eager to make a fast buck. set up stalls around the mouth of the cave, to sell hot dogs, soda pop, balloons and other souvenirs. Thousands of people, milling around, waiting for the latest news on Floyd. One weekend, 4500 cars from 20 different States turned the little side road leading to the cave into a traffic jam that stretched 8 miles! Con men worked the crowd. Some visitors posed for pictures outside the barb wire fence. A member of the Collins family moved among the crowd, introducing himself and passing out brochures, inviting them to visit White Crystal Cave.
Women sent letters, asking Floyd to marry them. One even volunteered to crawl into the cave and join Floyd for the wedding ceremony. A wealthy ChicagoAgents tried to sign up Floyd to go on vaudeville tours around the country. A Louisville minister even obtained permission to hold services on one of the bluffs overlooking the cave entrance and 5000 congregants got down on their knees and prayed for Floyd.
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The Sand Cave rescue attempt grew to become the third-biggest media event between the world wars. (The biggest media events of that time both involved Charles Lindbergh
On February 4, because the digging and heat melted the frozen mud, the cave passage used to reach Collins collapsed in two places. Rescue leaders believing the cave impassable and too dangerous, began to dig a shaft to reach the chamber behind Collins. The 55-foot shaft and subsequent lateral tunnel intersected the cave just above Collins, but when he was finally reached on February 17, Miner Edward Brenner was the first to see Floyd's face. He was dead, from exposure and hunger, with a cave cricket sitting on his nose.
As they did not reach him from the rear, the rescuers could not free his leg. The rescuers left his body where it lay and filled the shaft with debris. A doctor estimated that after enduring 2 weeks of pain, horror and freezing cold, he had died three or four days before he was reached, February 13 being the most likely.
With Collins's remains left in the cave, funeral services were held at the surface. Homer Collins was not pleased with Sand Cave as his brother's grave. Two months later, Homer Collins and some friends reopened the shaft. They dug a new tunnel to the opposite side of the cave passage, and recovered Floyd Collins's remains on April 23, 1925. Shortly after, the body was buried on the Collins family's farm near Crystal Cave (now known as Floyd Collins Crystal Cave).
Ace in the Hole is a 1951 film by Billy Wilder
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