During my senior year in High School at Marmaduke, I worked at a grocery store in Paragould. On Saturday nights we would close the store at 10:00 pm. One night 3 of my buddies and I decided we would go to Ravenden Springs and go camping. We took off and drove to Ravenden Springs and had a blast. We stopped at Janes Creek and hooked up a spot light and went crawdadding. (Hunting for crawdad). We wanted to just play in the creek. Then we drove up to Uncle Raymond’s place and drove down the road and turned around at the barn. We planned to camp out at the springs. We even saw an albino fox running down the road.
We finally made it to the caves and decided it was too dark to go climbing around so we parked the car just above what we called the Bottomless Pit. It was a pit close to Needles Eye. We threw our sleeping bags out on the ground and turned in for the night. Well really it was for the morning because it was about 2 in the morning.
When I woke up in the morning, one of the guys wasn’t around. I knew he always slept late and he couldn’t have got up early. We started calling his name and started looking around for him. That guy had started rolling around in his sleep and rolled down the slope and was wedged against a couple of trees……Just above the Bottomless Pit!! Scared me big time.
We went to eat breakfast and Uncle Raymond and Aunt Velma’s then went back to the caves to explore.

Needles Eye isn’t really a cave. It’s just a crack in the rock that you can climb through and get to the base of Lone Rock. Years of loose rock fell between the main bluff and Lone Rock and it forces Lone Rock out further from the bluff. I found a small hole in the loose rock at the base of the bluff. We started digging out the loose rock and we dug a hole big enough to crawl in. I wanted to go in the hole but the guys did not want me too. I went in just a little further and found a pretty big space but I couldn’t see anything. We went back to the car and got some flashlights and I had a new extension cord. What in the world did I need and extension cord for? OK, I was 17. Not too bright.
We went back to the hole and I tied the extension cord around my waist and grabbed the flashlight with instructions to the guys to pull me out if anything went wrong. The hole when back about 10 feet and the base was just a crack. There was a big rock in front of me with a shelf just high enough for me to climb over. I was excited. My Dad, and ancestors all the way back to the early 1800’s had been all over these bluffs and I found a new cave. There were stalactites hanging from the ceiling and everything. The guys kept telling me to come out and how much extension cord I had left. I just wanted to go a little bit further. Maybe I would find some old Indian bones or anything.
I could see something shiny up ahead on the ground. I had to go just a little bit further. I was running out of cord but I had to go up there. I got close enough to see…I found my treasure.
I found two, new, shiny… Miller Pony beer bottles. I did not know Indians had Miller beer back then!
I turned off my flashlight just to see how dark it was in that hole. It was dark. Then I saw a small light in the top of the cave. I turned back on my light and came back out. The guys gave me all kinds of grief for leaving them out there, but I told them we would have some good stories to tell later.
When we made it back home I couldn’t wait to tell Dad about my great discovery. He did not think it was near as exciting as I did. He got so mad he just walked off then came back and told me in several words that he did not think too much about my explorations. I think back and realize how would react if Tanner told me the same story. (Dennis)