There is also a riding stable where trail rides are available and the Analemmatic Sundial, where you can be the shadow that tells the time. You can sit in the natural habitat butterfly garden, watch butterflies, or observe the tortoises. This home houses the museum, research library, another beautiful gift shop, and an open-air café serving Mexican food. This is the site of an old stagecoach station and hosts the Ranch Headquarters. In addition to regular tours, reservations can be made to take special adventures, such as Ladder, Candlelight, and Wild Cave tours, where you can do a more in-depth and rough experience.Ī few minutes down the road is the 137-year-old La Posta Quemada Ranch. Post Tour ExperienceĪfter your tour, plan on browsing the gift shop, with items ranging from jewelry to bookends. Bats are also transients in this cave, so if you’re lucky, you may see some hanging around the top. Along the way, they explain the cave’s rooms, history, and “Bandit Legend” and point out figures in the rock formations, like Scary Witch Emma and Mr. Knowledgeable and witty tour guides lead you through a maze of tunnels and stairs equipped with handrails. Covered with stalactites (limestone hanging from the ceiling) and stalagmites (limestone coming up from the ground), the cave creates an ethereal feeling deep below the ground. Guests are first greeted with Old Baldy, a stalagmite standing guard near the cave tour entrance, requiring that you rub his head to make it out alive. Colossal Cave is one of the few where photos/videos may be taken inside. Only about 5% of the world’s caves are dry or dormant, meaning formations are no longer growing, but the cave may become active again in the future. Later, water seeped through the rocks and deposited crystals on the ceilings and walls, creating the formations.Ĭolossal Cave is the largest dry cave in the United States. Deep, hot processes have formed only 10% of the world’s caves. About 30 million years ago, something truly remarkable occurred: hot, sulfuric brine was pushed up into fractures in the limestone and started creating passageways. The limestone cave was formed during the Mississippian Period, over 320 million years ago under a vast inland sea. Some of the names of the largest stalactites include Bonecrusher and Fang. The tour allows you to walk down and up about six and a half stories, where you can see beautiful cave formations like stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, boxwork, and helictites. All tours include a well-trained guide who relates the Cave’s history, legends, and geology. The highlight of any visit to Colossal Cave Mountain Park is a half-mile-long tour of the Cave that takes about 45-50 minutes to complete. The cave was where outlaws and bandits sought a hiding place from the law during this time. In the mid to late-1800s, the Mountain Springs Hotel served as a National Mail Stage Line stagecoach stop on what is today a part of La Posta Quemada Ranch. From 1450-1880 A.D., the Sobaipuri, Apache, and the Papago (now Tohono O’odham) people used the cave as a place to live. Artifacts tell us around 900 to 1450 A.D., the Hohokam people used Colossal Cave for shelter, storage, and as a shrine. In 1992, Colossal Cave was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Admission to Colossal Cave Mountain Park.
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