If he had his way, Armin Krueger would live down here alone in the dark and damp with only the occasional brown bat, muskrat or dead polecat for company.
”It`s like home down here,” he said of the cave that has fascinated him since boyhood. ”I just about feel better here than up there.”
Krueger, 77, is the Cave Man of Illinois.
Since 1985, he has been on the state payroll as a ”cave caretaker” for Illinois Caverns, which is really just a single, state-owned cave, and so he is probably the only state employee delighted to be kept in the dark and buried in his work.
”I remember when we first talked with Armin about working as a caretaker for us, someone asked him how much he thought the job would be worth. He said it would be fine with him to get $50 a month,” said Jim Garner of the state Department of Conservation. ”We settled on a couple hundred a month, though he said he really didn`t need that kind of money. He is just tickled that the state lets him hang around his beloved cave and get paid on top of it.”
Illinois Caverns is one of more than 300 known caves in the state and one of four owned by the Conservation Department, but because the other three state-owned caves are home to endangered Indiana bats, Krueger`s is the only state cave open for public exploration.
Located in the remote bottomlands of the Mississippi River, about 35 miles south of East St. Louis, Illinois Caverns is mostly known to dedicated spelunkers, but it has a history as long and intriguing as its myriad passageways.
For more than 70 years, the cave`s history has been Krueger`s too.
”Armin grew up around the caverns and first explored them when he was 5 years old. The cave has been a lifelong thing for him,” said Garner.
”He is totally dedicated to protecting and preserving the caverns, so when the state bought the cave, we hired him on as caretaker because we knew he would do it whether we paid him or not.”
Young Armin Krueger was not the first to be captivated by this cave, which meanders for at least 6 miles 100 feet beneath the scenic pitch and roll of southwestern Illinois.
The unlit limestone cave is graced with a lively stream that rambles through it. The cave`s natural wonders include stalactites, stalagmites, columns, rock curtains and waterfalls that have been given fanciful titles such as Marvin`s Misery, Giant`s Foot, Capitol Dome and Cascade Canyon.
Known variously over the years as Burksville Cave, Egyptian Cave, Eckert Cave and even as ”the Mammoth Cave of Illinois,” it was mined for saltpeter during the Civil War and later became the first tourist cave in the state.
Illinois Caverns was first opened to tourists in 1901 and quickly became a major attraction, particularly during the World`s Fair of 1904 in St. Louis. The cave`s guest register from that era shows many dignitaries and foreign visitors. Hand-writing experts and historians have said the signature left by ”President Roosevelt of Oyster Bay, N.Y.” is probably authentic.
Early tourists took the train from St. Louis to Burksville, then horse-drawn wagons to the mouth of the cave. Kerosene lamps attached to the cave walls illuminated its features. But the cave closed in 1907 after the World`s Fair hoopla died down.
Forty years later, it opened again to paying visitors. This time electric lights were added and its pitchmen tried to compete with the far bigger Meramec Caverns across the river and 60 miles or so into Missouri.
Today, the highly commercialized Meramec Caverns draw nearly 200,000 visitors annually, but the grand plans for the Illinois Caverns never materialized. The electric lights were removed, and the cave was rarely visited until the state bought it seven years ago.
Krueger came with the package.
”The state owns it now, but it is still pretty much Armin`s cave,” said Jim Hamilton, who oversees Illinois Caverns for the Conservation Department.
Part man, part cave
With measurable quantities of subterranean grit lodged beneath his ragged fingernails, in the pores of his skin and in the fiber of his clothing (all of it cast off by cave explorers), Krueger appears to be part man, part cave.
Beneath a grimy L.A. Raiders baseball cap, his hair is an iridescent white, as is the stubble on his craggy face. He is lean and still quite fit from a lifetime of clambering about in his cave, and though he claims to have remained a bachelor ”because women found me too ugly to marry,” there is character etched in the features that jut beneath wild, flailing eyebrows.
Krueger lives alone, without television or telephone, and ventures into town only once a month to buy $100 worth of groceries, but he is no hermit. He reads ”the Book of Books,” listens to Christian broadcasts on his radio and subscribes to the local weekly newspaper.
Eccentric, but intelligent and sociable, he is eager to talk to those who seek knowledge of Illinois Caverns or of any of the nearly 100 other caves in the surrounding countryside, all of which he has explored.
”The extent of his knowledge is difficult to describe, but I`ll say this: On any given day of the week, Armin can tell you exactly where the salamanders will be hiding in the caverns,” said one of his state
supervisors, Vic Hamer.
Krueger`s fame is not limited to a small circle. He is considered ”the godfather of Monroe County caving” by members of The Windy City Grotto cave explorers club, according to member Ralph Earlandson of Oak Park.
”I can`t say that I`ve ever come across anyone quite like Armin,” said Earlandson, a computer programmer at the University of Chicago. ”He is a real legend. He has taken us on candlelight tours of Illinois Caverns and amazed us with his intimate knowledge of that cave. He has names for formations that most of us walk right by without noticing. Armin knows every inch of the caverns.”
Subterranean sorties
The modern-day cave man was born in New Design, a nearby village, and grew up on an 80-acre farm that borders the cave. He worked on the farm, or as a quarry laborer and trapper, and, after inheriting the land he lives on, he saw no reason to travel much beyond its borders.
”I never even bothered about going to see that arch in St. Louis,” he said. ”I got a place on a cliff in the (bottomland) that offers views as beautiful as anything you can see from that arch.”
Any desire for adventure and exploration Krueger might have had has been satisfied by his subterranean sorties under his home grounds, he said. One of his earliest childhood memories was a trip to the cave with his brother, his father and his uncle.
”We went as far as a place where you had to jump a canyon,” Krueger recalled. ”My dad and my uncle jumped it. But we had to stay behind. When we got older, though, we jumped it too.”
Perhaps it was being left behind on that first trip below that left Krueger with such a craving to explore the labyrinth of Illinois Caverns. Even now, he finds it so alluring that he prefers to sleep substratum. For one thing, its year-round temperature of 58 makes for comfortable sleeping winter or summer.
”I used to go down at night and sleep in the cave, but since the state has had it, they don`t like me to do that anymore” for safety reasons, he lamented.
Krueger does stay close, however. His primary residence, which stands a quarter mile or so from the cave entrance, is a ramshackle brick farmhouse guarded by a small fleet of rusted tractors and farm implements.
But most nights Krueger sleeps directly in front of the deep cleft in the earth that leads to the cave entrance. There, in an ancient travel trailer with peeling silver paint on its plywood skin and a window broken out ”by punks,” Krueger keeps watch for cave crashers.
”They`ve torn the gates down four times, so I stay in the trailer at night to protect the cave,” he said.
”They” are vandals who would hack or spray-paint Krueger`s caverns, knocking stalactites down and otherwise defacing nature`s work. Compelled by drink, drugs or an itch to be amorous underground, moonlight raiders show up frequently at the cave. Krueger persuades them to seek other locales.
”Humans are gonna be humans. We`re gonna have good ones and we`re gonna have bad ones,” he said. ”If we catch sneak-ins, we prosecute.”
Krueger doesn`t run off all of those who show up in the dark of night. If he determines that they are sober and seriously share his benign interest, he might just give them the deluxe treatment.
”I caught some guys out here one night and I had to take them to my own private cave to make them happy,” he said, referring to a smaller cave on his property known as Krueger`s Dry Run.
Helping lost cavers
Although he believes his main duty is to protect the Illinois Caverns cave, Krueger is also proud of his efforts on behalf of those who have been hurt or lost within its maze. He has searched and found cavers lost for as long as 12 hours, and he has rescued those who have fractured kneecaps and broken arms and legs.
”Some people will go down there and do all sorts of foolish things, and then I`ve had quite a few who look down at the hole and say that`s as far as they want to go,” Krueger said.
Recently, two stout fellows walked to the top of the steep, narrow concrete steps leading down to the entrance and recoiled at the very thought of even climbing down to the cave mouth, Krueger said.
In his younger days, Krueger might have been more critical of those surface sissies, but as he nears 80, he sometimes wishes for easier access to his haunt himself.
”I used to make it up and down real easy,” he said. ”But now every time I do it, I think maybe the state should put in an escalator.”
