Sad standoff, and now an expensive repair estimate, deters the telling of an important history

As a kid, our grade school class was one of many that got to visit John Brown's Cave in Nebraska City.

There was a cool log cabin, the Mayhew Cabin, hewn from local cottonwoods before Nebraska became a state.

There was this kinda spooky, underground "cave" -- a hand-made tunnel to a nearby ravine that was billed as a hiding spot for slaves escaping bondage in nearby slave states (but was really an effort to increase tourism and the tunnel was never used by escaping slaves).

Back then, John Brown's Cave was one of the Missouri River city's top tourist attractions, along with Arbor Lodge.

Now th...