George Veni

This book is outstanding. The author's goal was not tourism but to put all information about the local San Antonio caves into one publication. The author received a PhD in karst topography and studied limestone aquifers so is expertly qualified to put this kind of work together. There is a preface and introduction, and also several general sections on the value of caves, the hydrology and its association to both caves and the city's aquifer, cave exploration techniques, and on the fauna of the local caves. Then the author has a section on each of the hundreds of caves known in the local area. These sections include several types of information; usually the known history of the cave, its location, the geologic formation it is in, a cave map and crossection, and normally many paragraphs about the unique nature of each particular cave. Also included in many, are firsthand logs of the early exploration of the specific caves. Any specific fauna found is included here, as well as any animal or human remains found in the caves.

The caves are all indexed to a master location map. Each cave map has the cave survey team members and survey date noted as well as a scale bar and north arrow. Sometimes there are several cave maps of different vintages to show either exploration progress, or trash fill-up if that is occurring.

After the individual cave descriptions and maps is a thick bibliography of references.

There are a few photos sprinkled throughout the book of both cave entrances and cave interiors, all well captioned and placed with the cave the photo belongs with. People are in the photos for scale. The photos are good quality artistically and technically.

This is a lot of information and fills 300 pages.

In summary, this is a second edition of a detailed record of everything known about each and every cave that has been found in this area, Bexar County Texas.… (más)