NSS Convention 2026

The National Cave Museum was founded in 2000 by Gordon Smith and his partners at Diamond Caverns, Kentucky. The Museum is dedicated to preserving the history of caves and of the show cave industry, and its collection covers not just the United States, but also English-language material from the rest of the world. Smith's private acquisitions over the past 60 years have traditionally been the bulk of the Museum's collection, but since the Museum completed a 5,000 square-foot, fireproof, climate-controlled facility in 2017, it now attracts both donors to its collections and scholars and researchers to use them.

The Museum has embarked upon the monumental effort to catalog the hundreds of thousands of publications, serials, manuscripts, photographs, maps, and artifacts that it houses. It is currently focusing on its collection of 8000 individual stereo views, by far the most cave-related views ever assembled. Dating from 1865 until about 1910, they are the earliest photographic record of hundreds of important caves, and as such are being scanned and cataloged for use in both conservation and historical research. Similar efforts are underway to itemize the museum's huge collection of bound cave books, to create a searchable copy for nearly every grotto newsletter ever published, and to create finding aids for collections from every state and nation around the world.

The Museum holds quarterly volunteer weeks when cavers and researchers join forces to learn and catalog the collection. The weekend after this convention, the Museum will host an open house to show off its remarkable collection.