Cave Explorer Finds His Calling at Hidden River Cave

Cave exploration has fascinated Dave Foster almost his entire life.

As a Virginia youth, he would find himself engrossed in exploration stories like the sci-fi expedition classic “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” At 8, he was in his dad’s station wagon as they crossed a desert with no air conditioning to California, and explored the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Grand Canyon and elsewhere. And now, he’s 66, still quick to remember his fascination with caves at 14, when his friend’s father took him on a caving trip.

“You could explore in these little holes and crawl around and find places few people had ever been,” he said.

Today, he oversees the miles-long Hidden River Cave and adjacent American Cave Museum as the head of the roughly 300-member nonprofit American Cave Conservation Association. The cave is a central draw to tourists in the small Hart County town of Horse Cave and a renowned cave restoration success story, with a recent feature in The New York Times.

Foster has been a critical player through it all, said Pat Kambesis, a geographic information science instructor at Western Kentucky University. Kambesis, who also worked in the cave in the late ’80s and early ’90s as an explorer, added that Foster’s stewardship and fundraising have preserved and protected the cavern and enabled it to be a viable tourist show cave.

Restoration, tourism

The cave association — alongside the cave’s last private owner, the late Bill Austin — helped lead the transformation about 40 years ago. Following its 1986 relocation nearby from Virginia, the association has raised about $6 million to purchase needed lands and properties piecemeal — money used to restore and reopen the cave and develop the tours and museum, Foster said.

Previously experiencing high contamination due to discarded sewage, the cave is now a largely navigable attraction that has drawn around 25,000 annually since 2021. Central was getting a sewage treatment system built to transport wastewaters to a suitable disposal site, preventing wastewaters from flowing into the cave and enabling its stream to largely self-restore by 1991 — allowing for exploration and work inside the cave.

In November 2018, construction finished on a 100-foot inner-cave suspension bridge — and in February 2020, the inner Sunset Dome, 250 feet in diameter and 100 feet tall, became accessible.

Beyond the benefits of tourism, the sewer system has provided the capacity needed to support far more employment in the area, Foster said. It also supports a diversity of cave species that essentially die off if water or air quality is bad, Kambesis said.

Today, it’s known as a 10-mile-long cave system, Foster said — and it’s still being explored, with more than a mile of cave passage found since last summer, Foster said.

“You have to know the extent of the cave to be able to protect it,” he said.

The U.S., Foster adds, has already been well explored, its mountains climbed and all, as have other continents — and being a world-class explorer of places like mountains and oceans requires an unaffordable amount of money for travel and high-tech gear.

“… but with a few hundred dollars worth of gear, you can be a world-class cave explorer living in Kentucky,” he said.

Kambesis described Foster as someone for whom it’s important to work with the local community.

“Every once in a while, there’s some environmental issue going on in the cave,” Kambesis said. Rather than place blame, she said, his approach is, “What can we do to work together to minimize these problems?”.

Beyond work inside the cave, Foster is aiming for a major revision of the 30-year-old museum exhibits before he retires.

“We designed the exhibits in the museum before the digital age, when you were literally taking film and having to blow them up … It’s going to be really exciting to be able to upgrade the exhibits with modern technology.”

Dave Foster

Foster, who grew up in southwest Virginia and majored in music and geology, didn’t plan on spending his life here. Instead, the idea was to finish the project and move on to something else, he said.

“But it took 40 years,” he said. “I guess I’m lucky because there are a lot of people that go through the world wondering what they’re supposed to do.

“I feel like this was my calling, it was my passion … I feel like this is the reason I’m on this Earth — and that’s a nice thing to know.”

Today, he lives about four blocks away from the cave. While his family is in Virginia, his “music brothers and cave brothers” are extended family, he said.

Music has been essential, added Foster, who plays keyboards and guitar, and has performed with area bands for four years.

“When you run into roadblocks and when life gives you struggles and difficult challenges, it’s always important that you have something else to fall on that brings you joy,” he said.

This is an article from the Bowling Green Daily News, published October 12, 2025. Thanks to Bowling Green Daily News for allowing us to publish this article to our website.

Read more at: https://bgdailynews.com/2025/10/12/cave-explorer-finds-his-calling-at-hidden-river-cave/