History and Geology of Shippensburg Area Caves

Peiper Cave, Carnegie Cave, and Cleversburg Sink near Shippensburg have been popular caves for about 60 years. These are among the longest caves in the State. Stone (1932) and Smeltzer (1958) provide the most complete descriptions of these caves. This article presents additional history and geology about these Cumberland County caves formed over the past three million years.

Peiper Cave

Introduction

Peiper Cave is a well-known maze cave along the north side of Interstate 81 near Shippensburg in Cumberland County. It is located between the Fayette and King Street Exits of the highway. A spectacular discovery in 1948 was vandalized seven years later.

History and Geology

The cave was discovered in the early 1930s as limestone was quarried and crushed for Southampton Township roads. Quarrying began there in the 1800s. At the time of discovery, Hun and Bill Coy of Shippensburg were doing the quarrying. The small stone quarry is near the south end of a narrow wooded ridge on the former Peiper farm, previously the Cyrus Railing farm and, before that, the Bumgardner farm. Having owned the farm on which this cave is located since 1937, Peiper sold the property in 1972 to Rick Unger of Shippensburg. Ed and Kim Kehs of Hamburg, PA are the current owners. The cave entrance is now gated.

Along the same ridge in which Peiper Cave is located and a few hundred feet south of the entrance is a burned-out house. Spelunkers usually pass it on their way to the cave. Susan Heller formerly owned the house. Following her death, the house burned. Prior to the fire, several Heller children also lived there. During the years they used the cave as a playhouse, entering it as their own, to such an extent that they did not like cavers going there. Upon seeing cavers, the children ran into the cave, hid, and made ghost sounds in an attempt to scare people out of the cave.

In 1948, the Philadelphia Grotto (caving club) made a significant discovery of a “Hidden Passage” decorated with one of the most remarkable speleothem displays found in a Pennsylvania cave (Figure 1). In 1955 virtually all of the speleothems were vandalized. Despite vandalism, some interesting formations still exist in Peiper Cave, including helictites. Peiper Cave also provides excellent examples of dome pits, passages developed along vertical joints (Figure 2), flowstone (Figure 3), and breakdown (Figure 4).

A conspicuous feature in Peiper Cave is breakdown - i.e., en masse failure of cavern roofs or walls (Davies, 1951). The largest breakdown accumulation is in the First Room (Figure 4). Here limestone blocks up to 10 feet in length lie in a jumble, nearly filling half of the passage. Sometimes rock debris, clay, and travertine obscure breakdown. In these cases, recognition may be based on cave ceiling morphology. Breakdown in Peiper Cave creates flat ceilings (Figure 4). Figure 5 is a less common form of breakdown - rock slab separation from a cave wall. This slab is 20 feet long and 20 inches wide standing on edge along the left wall of the northern end of the First Room.

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