By Craig Gustafson
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SPRING VALLEY, Minn. (AP) - For his love of caves, John
Ackerman has fallen into deep pits, nearly drowned in an underground stream
and barely escaped being crushed by tons of rock.
It's no wonder his wife insists on a $2 million life insurance policy.
Over the past 16 years, Ackerman has spent more than $1 million buying
and digging up southern Minnesota farmland in search of caves unseen by
human eyes. With his modified track hoe, "Cave Finder," he's discovered
or expanded 19 caves on his 325-acre plot in Fillmore County.
His Cave Farm is considered one of the largest privately owned cave complexes
in the United States. Yet, it's virtually unknown to the public because
he's made no effort to commercialize it and doesn't intend to.
Nontheless, his aggressive tactics - constantly unearthing farmland and
using explosives - draws the ire of some. To others, he is a conservationist
who generously opens his caves to explorers. Friends describe him as a
hard-charger.
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| Clay Kraus and John Ackerman unearth a cave at the base of a sinkhole. |
That's why Ackerman says he went to great expense and battled neighbors and other exploreres to find his own caves.
"You're walking through a slice of time," he says as he surveys an excavated sinkhole that recently became his 19th cave. "To be the first human being to explore them is pretty much why we do it. And once we have discovered them, they're going to be here forever. They're going to be known, studied, photographed."
When he's not running his furniture restoration business in Burnsville, Ackerman and "Cave Finder" can be found scooping out sinkholes in search of darkened dirt or white-spotted stones - telltale sign of moisture that can lead to cave entrances.
Experts say the Cave Farm was likely created over hundreds of thousands and millions of years as water sifted through the soil, dissolving the 450-million-year-old limestone.