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More "cave" weird stuff:

Buried secrets could flare up
Thursday, March 25, 2004

By Dan Majors, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It's always a good idea to have labels on things that you put away in the pantry or freezer. You hate to pull something out from the back of the refrigerator and wonder, "What is this? And how long has it been back there?"

Police in St. Paul, Minn., this week have been digging out some gunpowder -- about a ton of it -- that somebody buried in caves dotting bluffs on the city's west side.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the gunpowder was discovered Monday afternoon by teenagers exploring one of the dozens of caves that have become popular places to party or probe. Reporter Heron Marquez Estrada said police responded to the site and quickly determined that this was a job for the bomb squad.

The bomb squad members spent most of Tuesday digging up "container after container" of the explosive powder, buried two feet down about 75 feet inside the cave. Officer Paul Schnell, spokesman for the police department, said that about 300 pounds of gunpowder was hauled away.

Then, as the workers were cleaning up to leave, they heard the chilling call from one of their comrades: "Hey, fellas! Look what I found over here!"

There, nearby, but buried just a little bit deeper, was a second batch amounting to as much as 1,700 pounds, sitting in deteriorating crates and tubes. Some of the stuff was just lying around loose.

"It turned out to be a bigger operation than anyone expected," Schnell said.

The crazy part is that no one seems to know how the gunpowder got there. It's a mystery. Schnell guessed that it probably was dumped there back in the 1950s when the U.S. military or somebody was trying to dispose of it. They stacked it in the back, buried it, and sealed the cave shut.
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http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04085/291095.stm