Hermit's Cave

Most sources suggest that this cave was the temporary abode of an Italian religious mystic Giovanni Maria Augustini. Born in 1801, this religious mystic lived here for a brief period in the spring of 1863. Later in 1863, he left Council Grove in the company of a wagon train, walking the 500 miles on the Santa Fe Trail to New Mexico. Other sources state that the "Hermit of the Trail" was Franciscan friar Matteo Boccalini, who erected a cross shortly after he arrived. Disheartened because the Jesuits interfered with his appointment as secretary to the Pope, he came to America and wandered from one Indian tribe to another teaching the gospel and administering the last sacrament to people on the trail.