In the 1880s, a Leadville newspaper man named Orth Stein filed dispatches that sounded like pure frontier hallucination: a vast cave system beneath the mountains, “thousands upon thousands” of formations, underground water, and chambers grand enough to baptize with names like “River Styx,” “hushed Niagara,” and a moonlit gallery fit for the Vatican. Later historians dunked on it as a tall tale—filed away under “Hoax, Humbug and Orth Stein.”

But a modern crew of Colorado cavers and geologist-types aren’t treating it like a campfire story. They’ve tracked the real people named in Stein’s articles, matched the described entrance to an abandoned mineshaft on private land, and spent years hauling buckets of black shale and mud out of a timbered 1800s hole that’s already ~45 feet deep—creeping toward the ~52-foot depth Stein described when miners allegedly “broke through” into the cavern. They swear they’re feeling airflow now. Either they’re about to punch into a lost cathedral under the forest… or they’re about to find the world’s most stubborn bucket of mud.

Resolution criteria: This resolves YES if, on or before 2026-12-31, there is a public write-up (e.g., a reputable caving org publication like the NSS / Journal of Spelean History, Rocky Mountain caving outlets, or a major news outlet) explicitly confirming they have reached a natural cavern from the suspected entrance shaft and documenting that the reopened cave is the Cyclopean Cave (or the same feature described in the Stein accounts), with supporting evidence such as photos/video, survey notes, or a cave map. It resolves NO if that date passes without such a public confirmation.