Mammoth Cave

In 2013, Brent Björkman of the Kentucky Folklife Program and Jon Kay of Traditional Arts Indiana were awarded the Archie Green Fellowship from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. This fellowship is awarded each year to select projects dedicated to occupational folklore research. Björkman and Kay’s project, Ranger Lore: The Occupational Folklife of Parks, focuses on the lives and work of national and state park rangers in Kentucky and Indiana.

Björkman turned his attention to Mammoth Cave National Park and conducted fieldwork with over thirty current and former park employees.

Mammoth Cave

Mammoth Cave National Park is located in South Central Kentucky, an hour and a half away from both Louisville and Nashville, just west of Interstate 65. The park covers over 50,000 acres. Containing nearly 400 surveyed miles of passageways, the cave itself is the world’s longest known system.

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The videos included here represent a small portion of the information collected. Informants discussed all aspects of their personal and professional lives, but four recurring themes -- interpretation, law enforcement, racial dynamics, and gender dynamics -- became evident after Björkman conducted interviews. Click the images below to watch rangers discuss these topics.

For full interviews and more brief clips, visit our YouTube channel as we add new content over the course of the year.

Full interviews, detailed interview information, and verbatim transcripts have been deposited at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Interested parties may contact the American Folklife Center for more information.

Race

As the National Park Service celebrates its centennial in 2016, this project aims to document important aspects of the park’s folklife: the practices, traditions, and attitudes that make Mammoth Cave and the people who work there unique. Interviews addressing the full scope of this project will be added to our YouTube channel over the course of the year. Interested parties may contact the American Folklife Center for full interviews, detailed interview information, and verbatim transcripts.

Work in and around Mammoth Cave National Park was conducted by the director of the Kentucky Folklife Program and the Kentucky Museum, Brent Björkman. He was assisted by graduate students in Western Kentucky University's Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology.

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