Carlsbad Caverns, in the Guadalupe Mountains of southern New Mexico, with the variety and scale of the formations in its “Big Room” make it the best of several caves we’ve toured to-date!
The Guadalupe Mountain area actually contain more than 120 caves that, unlike most caves, were formed by sulfuric acid in the groundwater that created the caverns as tectonic uplift raised the Guadalupe Mountains upwards and past the stationary level of the water table. This led to the unusual situation (versus caves that are formed by water dripping downwards) where the deepest levels of the cavern are actually about 2 million years younger than the upper.
The Carlsbad Cavern National Park provides public access to this natural wonder – the largest, readily accessible cave chamber in North America.
Despite the cave’s long history with human interaction, it has been very well maintained.
There is evidence in the cave that Native American tribes spent time here as did Spanish explorers.
As early as the 1880s, the cave was mined for bat guano (fertilizer) and the person credited with discovering its deeper rooms and more spectacular features is James White, a local cowboy and guano miner. White became a champion of the cave and largely due to his efforts it became a national monument (and White, its first ranger) in 1923.
In 1930, the National Park was created and in the 1930s, there was a plan, fortunately never completed, to blast through the canyon wall in order to facilitate automobile driving tours through the cave! The results of the initial exploratory attempts to create automobile access can be seen on the cave tour.
In 1959, portions of the movie “Journey to the Center of the Earth” were filmed in the “Kings Palace” and “the Boneyard” rooms of the cave.
Today, the standard tour of Carlsbad Cavern is a 1.25 mile, self-guided loop trail that winds through the cavern’s “Big Room” which is 8.2 acres in size and 755 feet beneath the surface. Access to the “Big Room” starts at the cavern’s natural entrance at the surface level near the visitor center. The natural entrance was created when the original, natural floor of the entrance area collapsed into the cavern below creating a deadly obstacle to cave exploration in the past. Today, a paved switchback trail with handrails descends the equivalent of 75 stories to get visitors safely to the start of the “Big Room” tour.
The route of the “Big Room” tour winds past a tremendous variety of well-lit cave formations – stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, draperies, flowstone, columns, cave pools, etc. – and there are several locations to look down (90 feet down) into the non-public-accessible “Lower Cave”. The “Big Room” route ends at the elevator entrance which provides an easier option to return the 755 feet back up to the visitor center.
There are several reasons we loved Carlsbad Caverns:
- Unlike most cave tours, the self-guided tour allows you to see as much or as little as you want at your own pace.
- The sheer scale of this cavern is jaw-dropping.
- All of the cave features are present (most of the caves we’ve toured only have a few), displayed well with good lighting, and close to the tour path.
- This cave allows you to take as many pictures as you want (and we did!) In fact, I, alone, took about 75 photos, which is an embarrassing number of cave formation pictures.
- The cave is nature at its most wonderous!
Below are a few of our favorite photos to give you a sense for this awesome cave. They don’t do it justice because we couldn’t effectively capture the size with limited /cave lighting, but we hope they’re enticing enough that you’ll go and experience what we deem the prettiest cave we’ve seen so far.
