Geological
Findings on Campus
-
By Cynthia Goertzen
A four-foot wide, ten- to fifteen-foot deep hole was discovered recently on the area of the Antioch campus known previously as the “golf course” and now called “The Antioch Commons.” The fact that this hole isn’t the first one ever found on campus has one Antioch professor curious—and ready to discover more.
A Desire to Investigate
Peter Townsend, Professor of Environmental Science and Geology, says that
this may be a sinkhole, but there is a second, more productive investigation
going on into the depth, origin and history of the hole.
“At the moment, we have information and we have rumor,” Townsend says. “What I see is possibility—possibility that there is a cave system under the golf course and wouldn’t that be interesting? This is something we need to investigate further.”
Evidently Townsend isn’t the only one who believes that. The State of Ohio has already indicated interest in examining the area using recently acquired sub-surface investigation equipment. Once the ground thaws (no exploration can take place until then), what this equipment might reveal will supplement work that Townsend is already planning for his students to perform during spring lab coursework.
Rumors and Facts
Are there more caves in town? One long-time
resident of Yellow Springs has reported playing in underground caves as
a child, and a former resident says caves in town were used as part of
the underground railroad to hide slaves. It leads to the possibility of
an underground system, of which the golf course could be a part.
“What I know for sure is that in 1975, an Antioch chemistry professor
was walking across the golf course and found a collapse close to the location
of the current collapse,” says Townsend. “I investigated it
with one of my students and concluded it didn’t go anywhere. Turns
out I was wrong.”
At the time of the discovery, College maintenance was contacted and they dumped dirt in the hole. The dirt eventually disappeared. More dirt went in, and that dirt disappeared. More dirt, later mixed with chunks of rock, has been going in that hole every three years since.
Now
Townsend admits, “whatever hole is there is much bigger than my
estimations. Combine that with the talk that there is more than one cave
system in town, and if so I want to know where they are, where they connect
and where they come out.”
To find this out, Townsend and his students will drop a tracer of environmentally
benign dye that fluoresces (the sameas is used in humans to find blockages)
into the hole after a
hard, spring rain — and watch for where it comes out.
Contact
Us