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Stanislaus Speleological Association The Stanislaus Speleological Association, commonly referred to as the Stanislaus Grotto, is based in Modesto, California, a city of 200,000 people located in the northern portion of California's San Joaquin Valley. The grotto was chartered in 1967 as the 149th grotto of the National Speleological Society. Local resident Marshall Bryden was the driving force behind the grotto's organization and is one of our founding members. Membership of the group has usually ranged from 15 to 25 people, with a high of 35. Frequently, we join with other nearby grottos for cave trips and social events. Throughout the years, the Stanislaus Grotto has focused on the nearby caves of the central Sierra foothills between Sonora and Jackson in the counties of Tuolumne, Calaveras and Amador. Multiple caves in this region provide interesting day trips for our members. Longer cave trips have been made to other regions of California and many western states. Since its earliest days, the Stanislaus Grotto has had close contact with local commercial cave owners. For several years, the grotto explored Moaning Caverns searching for the "large room" rumored to be deeper in the cave. During this time, the grotto started its digging activities in search of undiscovered passages. In recent years, the Stanislaus Grotto helped explore and map California Caverns, also known as Cave City. Now owned by the Fairchild family, our dig projects and activities continue there to this day. Throughout its history, the grotto has maintained a register program in local caves as a means of studying visitation patterns. Some of the collected information now dates back almost 40 years. Cave cleanup and conservation are also important activities. The Stanislaus Grotto has made extensive efforts removing wall graffiti and cleaning up several area caves. We also assisted with the inventory of cave resources impacted by New Melones Reservoir on the Stanislaus River. |