After our day in Roswell learning all about aliens, it was time to move on to something a bit more real, if every bit as fantastical.
250 million years ago southeastern New Mexico and western Texas were covered by the Delaware sea. Millions of years of uplift later the reef filled with large mineral deposits and fossils turned to the land we now call the Guadalupe Mountains. Groundwater reacting with these minerals formed acids that slowly dissolved these deposits to form what is today Carlsbad Caverns. As one of the most accessible and largest cave complexes in the world it is home to the “Big Room” the largest cave chamber in North America which you can see via a self guided tour.
Down we went, 750 feet into the earth in just about one minute, courtesy of one of four elevators that takes you right into the Caverns. You can also walk in through the natural entrance, but we didn’t have enough time to get to the meeting place for our ranger led tour of the King’s Palace, so we let the elevator do the work. We passed through the air lock and we had about a half hour to wander before our guided tour.
To put it all in perspective there is a model of the caverns in the visitor center. You can see the visitor center and elevator tube as well as the natural entrance on the top right of the photo below. The big room is at the bottom of the photo:
I didn’t realize how much of the Caverns you could see on your own, which is quite a lot. You are free to tour the Big Room at your own pace, and that takes you through 1.25 miles of the caves large cavern.
At over 250 feet high at its highest point, the Big Room lives out to its name.
It was a bit unclear based on the messages on the website whether or not any ranger led tours were being offered. The National Park Service app listed four different tours, but then we found out it didn’t even list the correct phone number for the park, so it wasn’t that great of a source of information. The website stated something ambiguous about a tour of the King’s Palace possibly being offered. With all the conflicting information, we finally called and got to the bottom of it. Tours, if they were offered, would start at 10 a.m. so we needed to arrive right at opening time at 9 to find out and reserve a spot. The reason for the uncertainty? Lack of staffing. I’ll let you read between the lines here. I guess you can’t post the truth on the website when the company line is supposed to be ‘we have adequate staffing’.
Anyhow, we did reserve our spot on the tour upon arrival, as it turned out they did have the staffing on the day we happened to visit. If you get a chance to go on the ranger led tour, it is worth your while. You’ll get a good history of the cave, both from a geologic, biological as well as from a human perspective. Plus you’ll get to see a part of the cave that is otherwise not open to the public.
Back in the 1800’s settlers were drawn to the cave’s natural entrance by thousands of bats leaving the cave in the evening. Early use of the cave involved mining bat guano out of it for use as a fertilizer. The first person to extensively explore the cave was Jim White, beginning in 1915.
He came back with such fantastic descriptions of what he found that few believed him. It wasn’t until White took a photographer lugging the bulky, heavy equipment of the day along that people started to realize what a hidden wonderland was hidden beneath the ground. By 1924 the Caverns were declared a National Monument, and in 1930 Congress created Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
After our guided tour we finished off exploring the remainder of the cave open to self guided exploration. The visitor map has a quote on it from Robert Holley who was sent to the Caverns from the Department of Interior’s Washington D.C. office: ” I am wholly conscious of the feebleness of my efforts to convey in words the deep conflicting emotions, the feeling of fear and awe, and the desire for an inspired understanding of the divine creator’s work which presents to the human eye such a complex aggregate of natural wonders”
While the constructed walkways and lighting have taken much of the fear out of the experience, and we have quite a scientific understanding of what is behind the formation of the Caverns, I do have to still agree, I too am wholly conscious of the feebleness of my efforts to convey in words such a complex aggregate of natural wonders.
