Bats

Portions of this text were excerpted from the Vinegaroon, a monthly newspaper in Uvalde, Texas and was originally published sometime around 1970. As far back as the Civil War, the cavern played important roles in the nation's defense. When someone discovered that decaying bat feces (guano) becomes saltpeter, the chief ingredient of gunpowder, the steps toward a full-scale mining operation were short ones for the Frio Cave. Throughout the Civil War and World War I the cave provided tons of guano, and today the actual drying kilns for the guano still stand at the entrance. Pits were carved out of rocky bed of the nearby Frio River in which to burn wood, producing charcoal for the gunpowder production. More recently, farmers extracted guano for use as fertilizer. A narrow gauge railway which extended deep into the cave was constructed for the operation. Eventually a road which extends into the second room was constructed for 4-wheel drive trucks. Due to the expense and the creation of more efficient fertilizers, the guano mining operation has ceased, although the rusty weatherbeaten skeletons of the farmers' machinery still surround the cavern's entrance. The most ambitious operation for utilizing the cave's assets was conceived on the eve of World War II and called the "Bat Bomb" project by some. Dr. Lytle S. (Doc) Adams and his team devised a plan for fitting millions of bats with tiny incendiary devices and dropping them on Japan. At 1000 feet a mechanism would release ...

See Also : Civil Engineering Webboard Civil Engineer CIVIL ENGINEERING COURSE Stairs