Beall, Walter H

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The Palimpsest

Dutton\u27s Cave

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Volume 25 | Number 5 Article 8
5-1-1944
Dutton's Cave
Walter H. Beall
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Beall, Walter H. "Dutton's Cave." The Palimpsest 25 (1944), 156-160.
Available at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/palimpsest/vol25/iss5/8
Dutton’s Cave
In the days a generation ago when livery teams 
and human legs still were recognized means of 
transportation for persons bent on brief outings 
for recreation, Dutton’s Cave, three miles and a 
half northeast of West Union, was a favorite 
picnic spot Seldom a day went by without one 
or more picnic parties visiting the place, and on 
Sundays the cave premises often drew a large 
number of groups to total a hundred or more per­
sons, building their campfires and preparing their 
picnic meals.
The cave, with a front sixty feet in height, is 
generally considered the most impressive piece 
of scenery in the West Union locality, and has 
shared with Falling Spring, five and a half miles 
northwest, the chief popularity as a picnic place, 
though Falling Spring has the advantage of easier 
climbs to reach the picnic grounds.
Dutton’s Cave got its name from its discoverer, 
Lorenzo Dutton, who found it the first year he 
lived in Fayette County, in 1848. Although Mr. 
Dutton was not the first settler in what afterward 
became Union Township of Fayette County, he 
was the second. The first settler was Thomas J.
156
DUTTON'S CAVE 15 7
Smith, who built a cabin in August, 1848, about a 
mile northeast of the present courthouse square 
in West Union. Smith moved on soon, leaving 
no historic trace, and so, for something like sixty- 
six years, until his death in 1914, Mr. Dutton was 
rated “the oldest inhabitant” of the West Union 
community.
Lorenzo Dutton, who, in July, 1848, came from 
Meredith, Delaware County, New York, selected 
a cabin site about a mile and a half northeast of 
Smith’s place. He went back to New York and 
when he returned in September he was accom­
panied by Henry Jones, Charles Jones, William 
H. Blanchard, and William W. Bailey. These 
men built a dwelling. It consisted of four upright 
corner poles, some other poles laid horizontally 
as a basis for a roof, while all the rest of the struc­
ture, sides and roof, consisted of prairie hay. 
They had a cook stove; they gathered abundant 
wild honey in the woods; and, as they claimed, 
“lived like princes” on slapjacks and wild honey. 
But within a month a prairie fire swept over the 
country and burned their happy home. They 
then put up a log cabin, which served them 
through the winter.
Mr. Dutton's first experience in log-cabin build­
ing occurred at the home of a neighbor, a mile and 
a half north of the Dutton farm, soon after he
158 THE PALIMPSEST
arrived. When the “log raising“ was finished, 
the pioneer settler got dinner for the crowd. His 
coffee pot had been burned up accidentally, and 
he had only one kettle to cook in. So he cooked 
beans in the kettle; then turned them out and 
boiled pork and potatoes in the same kettle; and 
finally turned out the pork and potatoes, and made 
coffee in it. Wooden chips were used for plates, 
and the seven men took turns drinking coffee from 
two tin cups.
One day in the fall of 1848 when Lorenzo Dut­
ton and William Bailey were out hunting bees 
they heard the rattle of a snake. Having located 
the rattler, Bailey threw a stone at it. Curiously 
enough, the stone by fortunate chance rolled along 
till it reached the mouth of the rattlesnake den, 
stopped there, and blocked the hole. A home run 
thus became impossible for the whole rattlesnake 
family, who were out sunning themselves. So 
Dutton and Bailey kept on gathering stones, and 
had a field day at snake killing, disposing of eigh­
teen reptiles, some of them large. One had twen­
ty-one rattles.
It was on this occasion that Mr. Dutton dis­
covered the cave which bears his name. His farm 
did not embrace the cave property, which was 
about half a mile from his home, though his land 
extended within a few rods of it. From the rocky
DUTTONS CAVE 159
front of the cave a spring-fed stream of almost 
icy cold water led down between high hills, and 
thence along a pleasant, well timbered glade near 
a sugar bush for some two miles northeasterly to 
join the Turkey River. At that time it was pos­
sible to go back into the cave for three hundred 
feet, where a small lake existed. Tradition says 
that someone built a small boat and rowed around 
on this lake, but for thirty or forty years past the 
cave has been so silted up that going into its re­
cesses has been almost impossible, very incon­
venient, and possibly dangerous.
The chief historical interest which is still at­
tached locally to the Dutton name comes from the 
fact that the farm on which he settled in 1848 and 
later bought from the government is still held in 
ownership by his descendant, G. L. Hackett of 
West Union, and never has been out of the fam­
ily ownership in ninety-six years. In respect to 
continuous ownership by one family this farm 
holds the record for Fayette County. The farm 
of 125 acres, was left by Mr. Dutton in his will in 
1914 to his only children, two daughters, Mrs. 
Carrie Hackett and Mrs. Lillie Helmer. Mrs. 
Hackett bought Mrs. Helmer’s interest in 1921. 
Upon Mrs. Hackett’s death on February 8, 1929, 
the farm was left to her five children. Her son, 
G. L. Hackett, bought out the other heirs one at
160 THE PALIMPSEST
a time, until he had finally acquired full title in
1942.
After Mr. Dutton retired from the farm to West 
Union in 1896 the place was occupied by his 
daughter and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. W. L. 
Hackett; then after their deaths by their daughter, 
Cora Hackett, and their son, Gordon Hackett, 
and his family. Gordon Hackett moved off a few 
years ago, and Cora Hackett moved to West 
Union in 1942, that being the first time in ninety- 
four years that the Dutton family occupancy had 
lapsed, except for one year about 1908 when the 
Hackett family spent a year at Hornell, New 
York. In respect to occupancy by one family line, 
also, this farm holds the record for Fayette Coun­
ty-
Lorenzo Dutton was a respected and beloved 
citizen of West Union. He had a great store of 
reminiscences and a quizzical humor; he was a 
reader and thinker, a good visitor, who delighted 
to meet and talk with his fellow men. In the later 
years of his life, for what he was and for what he 
represented, he lent much pleasure to the lives of 
those men along the street who enjoy "meeting 
the fellows" every day to talk things over.
W a l t e r  H. B e a l l


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