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Nutty Putty Cave
Coordinates	40°05′51″N 112°02′13″W / 40.09750°N 112.03694°W / 40.09750; -112.03694
Discovery	1960 (by Dale Green)
Geology	Chert
Entrances	1
Difficulty	Slippery
Hazards	Slippery and tight
Access	Permanently blocked since 2009

The Nutty Putty Cave is a hydrothermal cave located west of Utah Lake in Utah County, Utah, United States. The cave attracted amateur and professional cavers alike despite its narrow passageways. It has been closed to the public since 2009 following a fatal accident that year. Before that, it was popular among Boy Scout troops and college students.

Discovery and exploration

The cave, first explored in 1960 by Dale Green and friends, is currently owned by the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, and managed by the Utah Timpanogos Grotto. The cave system was named after the putty-like texture of the soft, brown clay found in many of its passages. Green originally thought of calling it "Silly Putty" but later decided "Nutty Putty" sounded better. The clay-like texture is composed of silicon dioxide commonly found in sand. Because the cave was formed upward with superheated water forming limestone, many additional minerals make up the complex structure. It contains 1,400 feet (430m) of chutes and tunnels and, prior to closure, had been accessible via a narrow surface hole.

Before 2009, this cave had four separate rescues of cavers and Boy Scouts who got stuck inside the cave's tight twists, turns, and crawls. In 2006, an effort was put forth to study and severely limit the number of visitors allowed inside the cave. It was estimated the cave was receiving over 5,000 visitors per year, with many visitors often entering the cave late at night and failing to take proper safety precautions. The cave's popularity had caused excessive smoothing of the rock inside the cave to the point it was predicted a fatality would occur in one of the cave's more prominent features, a 45-degree room called "The Big Slide". A gate was installed on May 24, 2006, and the cave was temporarily closed. In early 2009, proper management was established and an application process was developed to ensure safety precautions were being met. On May 18, 2009, the cave was reopened to the public.

Death of John Edward Jones

On November 24, 2009, 26-year-old John Edward Jones, a known, habitual user of crack-cocaine, became stuck and died in the cave after being trapped inside for 27–28 hours.

Jones and three others had left their party in search of "The Birth Canal", a tight but navigable passageway with a turnaround at the end. Jones entered an unmapped passageway which he wrongly believed to be the Canal and found himself at a dead end, with nowhere to go besides a narrow vertical downward fissure. Believing this to be the turnaround, he entered head-first then became wedged upside-down. The fissure measured 10 by 18 inches (25 by 46 cm) and was located 400 feet (120 m) from the entrance of the cave. A large team of rescue workers came to his assistance. The workers set up a sophisticated rope-and-pulley system in an attempt to extricate him, but the system failed when put under strain, plunging Jones back into the hole. Jones ultimately suffered cardiac arrest and died due to the strain placed upon his body over many hours by his inverted, compressed position.

After rescuers concluded that it would be too dangerous to attempt to retrieve his body; the landowner and Jones' family came to an agreement that the cave would be made permanently closed, with his body sealed inside as his final resting place, and as a memorial to Jones. Explosives were used to collapse the ceiling in the Ed's Push passageway of the cave close to where Jones' body was, and all the entry points to the cave were permanently sealed by filling them with concrete to prevent any future access.

Some cavers opposed the cave's closure. Facebook community groups petitioned to save the cave but failed. Although cavers had cut their way through a gated entrance to the property prior to the closure of the cave, the explosives used to permanently seal the passageways and the cemented entry made this difficult if not impossible to access the cave system again.

A film about the tragedy titled The Last Descent was released on September 16, 2016.

See also

• Vortex Spring
• Floyd Collins
• Cave rescue

References

1. "Why Utah's Nutty Putty Cave Is Sealed Up With One Spelunker Inside. John James became stuck upside down in this cave and waited 27 hours until his death which he knew was coming". June 19, 2018. Archived from the original on May 18, 2021. Retrieved May 18, 2021.
2. "Nutty Putty Cave Before and After the 2009 Tragedy". HowStuffWorks. Archived from the original on January 28, 2023. Retrieved September 29, 2023.
3. Morgan, Emiley (November 26, 2009). "Man trapped in Utah County's Nutty Putty cave dies". Deseret News. Archived from the original on December 18, 2019.
4. "Nutty Putty Cave discoverer doesn't want it to be closed". Archived from the original on August 29, 2022. Retrieved August 29, 2022.
5. "Nutty Putty Cave Before and After the 2009 Tragedy". HowStuffWorks. October 21, 2021. Archived from the original on January 28, 2023. Retrieved February 14, 2023.
6. "History". The Nutty Putty Cave Official Website. Archived from the original on May 15, 2009.
7. "SITLA Owned Cave Access". The Nutty Putty Cave Official Website. Archived from the original on May 15, 2009.
8. "Man trapped in cave dies during rescue attempt". CNN. November 26, 2009. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
9. "How Long Can a Person Safely Hang Upside Down?". HowStuffWorks. Archived from the original on September 28, 2023. Retrieved September 29, 2023.
10. "Nutty Putty: 'I really, really want to get out'". The Salt Lake Tribune. Archived from the original on March 23, 2022. Retrieved February 22, 2022.
11. "Body of John Jones, medical student trapped in Utah cave, won't be recovered; Nutty Putty to close". New York Daily News. November 28, 2009. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
12. "Nutty Putty: 'We're going to get you out'". The Salt Lake Tribune. Archived from the original on October 30, 2023. Retrieved November 17, 2023.
13. "Nutty Putty Cave sealed off in Utah". United Press International. December 4, 2009 – via Gale.
14. Peterson, Janice (December 3, 2009). "Nutty Putty Cave will be sealed by week's end". Archived from the original on May 22, 2022. Retrieved May 7, 2022.
15. Cabrero, Alex (December 3, 2009). "Utah cavers angry over closure of Nutty Putty m cave". Archived from the original on May 31, 2022. Retrieved May 7, 2022.
16. "Domo CEO and founder excited to introduce filmmaker, tell story of Nutty Putty Cave incident". Deseret News. September 13, 2016. Archived from the original on March 10, 2023. Retrieved March 10, 2023.

External links

• Accident report from the National Speleological Society
• The Nutty Putty Cave official website (Now offline – archived version from archive.org)
• Map of Nutty Putty Cave; Climb-Utah.com
• Memorial Website for John Jones (Archive.org copy – original site is now offline)
• Nutty Putty Cycle Team (Archive.org copy – original site is now offline)

• Caves of Utah
• Caving incidents and rescues
• Destroyed landforms
• Landforms of Utah County, Utah
• 2009 in Utah
• Utah County, Utah
• Accidental deaths in Utah
• November 2009 events in the United States