Own your own cave for $1,000

[icestac]

If any of you are like me, you've dropped a grand on gear before you've even known what you did. So just out of curiosity, how many of you would like to put that grand towards your own cave?

This came out of the other thread - http://www.cavediver.net/forum/showthread.php?t=9683

I'd put a grand towards this. Can we find 79 others? Post here is you're interested. If we get to 80, then maybe we can make it happen.

Please don't vote yes unless you actually have a grand to spare and are truely interested.

For what it is worth, I do realize there would be taxes and everything else associated with the land, but it looks like it is like $500/year which is like $6.25/person.

Cheers,
~Jeff

High Springs Herald
16 Feb. 2009

Sinkhole for sale. No. joke. But this one comes with a surprise
By Lindsay Smith
For The Herald

HIGH SPRINGS – For just $80,000, you can own a hole in the ground.

The hole is surrounded by trees on two acres of open, untamed Florida property.

All of the usual amenities are included: woodpeckers, squirrels, even the occasional raccoon for no additional cost.

Although a cable subscription isn’t provided, there’s plenty of wind and fair weather.

Tony and Isabel Realty will even throw in the sparkling cavern hidden underneath the hole as part of the deal.

“It’s a cave diver’s dream,” Realtor Tony Bootbhy said.

The small entrance to the unmapped set of caverns beneath the 2-acre property, located in High Springs, has been untouched except for the sparse handful of divers who have explored its depths in the 22 years it’s been owned by High Springs resident John Harper.


Harper, known as a pioneer cave diver in the 1960s, dubbed the sinkhole Whippoorwill Sink after he bought it from his neighbor, a local Realtor by the name of Bob White.

White offered to let Harper dive the sinkhole before he sold the property.

From above, surrounded by trees and the shade of the woods, “it looked just like a little piece of water,” Harper said.



He dove in and followed a small tunnel about 15 feet under until it suddenly opened up.

Underneath the small sinkhole’s opening stretched a dark cavern that Harper estimated to be about 700 feet long and 30 feet wide, filled with crystal clear water.

“It’s such a beautiful, beautiful cave,” he said. “It doesn’t look like anything from the surface; it’s just a little place with limestone outcroppings over it. But once you check it out, there couldn’t be a more ideal spot.”

Harper swam back to the surface and decided right then that he wanted the sinkhole for himself.

Now, he’s ready to pass the sinkhole – and its mysteries that eluded him for more than two decades – on to someone else.

With such clear water and a structure similar to Hornsby Springs, located nearby, Harper was sure that somewhere (if he could only find it) the sinkhole connected to the underground Hornsby system.

Now retired at the age of 69, he was never able to discover the hidden connecting channel.

He and his wife Diana are trying to sell the property – and the mystery – to anyone with the appreciation for the unusual.

“I’ve gotten older and less proficient in cave diving over the years,” he said.

“It’s an advanced dive,” said Tony Boothby of Tony and Isabel Realty. “It really appeals to cave divers because you have your own underwater cave to explore. Plus, it’s a unique piece of geological history.”



Harper said that he was hoping to sell it to “somebody who wanted to carry on with what I wanted to do,” but ultimately he’ll be happy to see it passed on.

“The beauty of it, just owning something like that…to me, it’s fabulous,” he said.

END

[fixxervi6]

depends on the cave

is it high flow, good vis, no flow, side mount, scooterable etc etc etc.

[atedeschi]

i wonder if they would let us check out the cave before it was purchased? is there anything built on the property? not like that matters but a swim in the cave would be what i would want before purchaseing.

[cwick]

I'm in!

[TommyB]

So what's the corporation going to be called.
If so-and-so gives 5000.00 vs the 1000.00 the others give, does that give the 5000.00 giver more voice on what goes on?
Who controls the corp? Entity eg inc, llc, dba etc etc.
Majority stock holder? Owners?

I'd have a lot more questions before I gave $1000.00 or $10.0000

[fixxervi6]

So what's the corporation going to be called.
If so-and-so gives 5000.00 vs the 1000.00 the others give, does that give the 5000.00 giver more voice on what goes on?
Who controls the corp? Entity eg inc, llc, dba etc etc.
Majority stock holder? Owners?

I'd have a lot more questions before I gave $1000.00 or $10.0000

I agree

If everything was drawn up proper, and if the cave had potential, then I may be in.

[icestac]

So what's the corporation going to be called.
If so-and-so gives 5000.00 vs the 1000.00 the others give, does that give the 5000.00 giver more voice on what goes on?
Who controls the corp? Entity eg inc, llc, dba etc etc.
Majority stock holder? Owners?

I'd have a lot more questions before I gave $1000.00 or $10.0000

Good questions. I was figuring if there was a lot involved at a low cost, that it would be for recreation rather than investment. Personally, if I am spending a grand on something like this, I am not really planning to see it again, but I would fully expect to be able to go down there to dive and camp whenever I want.

If it turned out that there is 16 people putting forth $5K, then that would be a different story and we'd probably want to have a more clear exit strategy up front, buyout clause, etc.

In either case, we would definately have a corp that owns it and have some voting structure (like if we wanted to build a structure on the land vs. keeping it bare). There are probably more questions than answers right now, but I guess for the time being, figure a KISS model. It is probably not worth too much mental investment unless there is enough interest and sufficient capital to make it real.

I guess at this point, I'm just seeing what the interest is. Knowing full well that is probably does NOT go, it would sure as hell be fun to try.

~Jeff

[divindoc]

Sounds interesting. Makes the purchase of Cow by NSS-CDS look like the Bargain of the Century!

[icestac]

i wonder if they would let us check out the cave before it was purchased?

This is from Aug 2007:

Mark Long and I dove Whip-poor-will Sink Cave today on John Harper's lot for sale. Very silty, no flow, 15ft vis. Looks to us like a large cavern was mostly filled over the eons by surface debris to create a “cone within a sphere.” The remaining unfilled rock void is thus a tall, narrow, inward-curving semi-circular cave.

With the entrance coming into the side of the top of the room, I can see how Cindy thought it might have been an offset pit below a small entrance sinkhole - John drew us an entirely different, third picture of the cave! LOL I am reminded of the story of the 12 blind men trying to describe an elephant from only parts of the pachyderm’s person. This cave needs to be mapped.

This “cone within a sphere” cave type is common in FL and quite familiar to dry cavers. Cone-sphere caves often have side passages, too, and hopefully there’s one there that goes... Although we saw no such side passages, we were in the water only a short time and saw but a small portion of the cave.

John dove the cave 7 times in the mid-1980s when he bought it, then he got more interested in other dive sites, and then he quit cave diving until recently.

We saw no troglobites or fish, but there is a layer of biofilm covering the cave surfaces. There are some really cool looking rows of "snottites," or their underwater equivalent, underneath ceiling ledges immediately after entering the main cave. I also saw a couple of mineral (saline?) seeps.

As the chairman of the NSS Nature Preserves Committee, I did this "work" today in order to start trying to ascertain whether this cave should be under ownership and/or management by cave divers. The site needs more such “work,” especially mapping. John is eager to sell the property and therefore quite willing to allow buyers to dive the cave (if certified + sign waiver). John is talkative and has a bunch of old stories about the original US cave divers that you can otherwise only read about today.

He also has a LOT OF OLD GEAR, CINDY!

i wonder if they would let us check out the cave before it was purchased? is there anything built on the property?

Not as best I can tell.

~Jeff

[Walter Pickel]

Wow...So this is an LLP and you are selling shares? Who handles the insurance?