I am stepping over the county line
just wee bit this month to tell you about a place most everyone in this
area has heard of at some point in their life. Sanders Cave is located
in the Brooklyn community in Conecuh County, AL. To get there...well...you
just have to have someone take you that knows the way!
The cave is located close by the side of
a branch and the mouth opens into the side of a lime rock ridge and has
a slight oval shape. The face of the entrance is covered with names, intials,
and dates carved into the rock. From the entrance the floor slopes downward
for about twenty feet before leveling off into a large room. There are
large rock formations with icecycles hanging down from the top in places.
The cave is always the same temperature and the air is cold and damp, and
the lime rock floor is slippery. The cave is narrow with low ceilings in
some places, while widening with high ceilings in others.There is a hole
at the top of cave resembling a skylight. It is beleived to be the entrance
used by the robber, Joseph Thompson Hare. The present entrance was opened
years later.
Joseph Thompson Hare was born in 1780 in
Pennsylvania and became a robber in his teenage years. He organized a robber
gang around 1801 in New Orleans and they robbed overland travelers from
New Orleans to Pensacola up to Canada. Hare was hanged in 1818 in Baltimore,
MD for robbing a U.S. Mail Coach. It is said that he used Sanders Cave
and buried gold there.
Other stories about the cave include -
Jesse James and Rube Barrows used the cave; that it has no end; that an
underground river once flowed through it; and that it leads to the Sepulga
River.
Sanders Cave is just one of the many interesting
points of interest in this area. Still today, kids talk about going to
the cave and exploring......most may go looking but can't find the location.
Like I said earlier...it is hard to locate!
SOURCE:Alabama Room, JDCC Community College
Library: Vertical File: Sanders Cave:newspaper clipping from the Brewton
Standard dated June 1, 1967
