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On January 8, 1923, Albert Janin, trustee of the Mammoth Cave Estate, wrote to John P. Morton & Company, requesting that the name "Martel" be removed from the map of Route 4 contained within Hovey's 1912 Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. The company quickly complied. Surviving documents do not indicate Janin's reason for the request. This paper explores a range of possibilities, from possible animus towards French caver E.A. Martel to hope of stopping incursions into Mammoth Cave by New Entrance tours. None appear plausible.
When rational explanation fails, we must consider irrationality. Janin was 80 years old in August 1923 and had been in declining physical health for a decade. By May 1924, although still at Mammoth Cave, he had round-the-clock caregivers and displayed behavior possibly indicative of mental decline. He lived another four years, dying in May 1928.
Whatever reason Janin had for removing Martel's name from one map in the guidebook then being sold at Mammoth Cave, he left us with an interesting and relatively rare variant of that guidebook. Morton & Co. did not make a new edition for the single change, nor did it indicate print runs in the book's front matter. However, Janin's letter and the publisher's response mean that any copy showing the complete name "Martel Avenue" on the Route 4 map found on page ix was printed before 1923. Any copy showing only "Avenue" was printed in 1923 or later. The relative rarity of the variant is suggested by the holdings of the National Cave Museum. Of twenty-seven copies in its collection, only one is the "missing-Martel" variant.
Katie Algeo, Western Kentucky University, Emerita