Underground Monster--- Crystal Cave Longest In World, Is View Cincinnati Time-Star, 2/20/54 CAVE CITY, Ky-Explorers today called Crystal Cave in Southern Kentucky an "underground monster" that may be the longest cave in the world. Members of the National Speleological (cave study) Society, who will come to the surface today after exploring Crystal Cave for a week, said they feel convinced that it will prove to be bigger than Mammoth Cave. The entrances of the two caves are just four miles apart in the Mammoth Cave National Park area. Mammoth Cave now holds the title of the world's longest cave. Neither of the caves are yet fully explored. But Thomas C. Barr Jr., Nashville, Tenn., a geologist, pointed to a theory first expressed in 1928 by Armin K. Lobeck, New York. Barr said that Lobeck, a prominent geologist, holds that a comparison of surface formations shows that Flint Ridge over Crystal Cave indicates that it is the longest cave. One exploring party reported "the more cave we found, the more leads we got, and the more endless the cavern became." They said they stumbled into a "lost paradise" of canyons where coral, fossils and shells were inlaid in wide streaks across cave walls. The undersea deposits were apparently pressed there "millions of years ago," reported Roger W. Brucker, Yellow Springs, O., and Luther Miller, Oblong, Ill. "The potentials of the discovery are enormous," they said. The discovery occurred as explorers looked for a river which they believed to be formed by a wilderness of subterranean waterfalls. The water in some places spouted into pits 80 feet deep. The expedition was aimed at mapping previously unexplored territory and gathering scientific information.