Kartchner Caverns State Park
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Kartchner Caverns State Park (31°50′15″N 110°20′50″W / 31.8375°N 110.34722°WCoordinates: 31°50′15″N 110°20′50″W / 31.8375°N 110.34722°W) is an Arizona state park, located nine miles (14 km) south of the town of Benson (near Tucson) and is considered by many[who?] to be the "crown jewel" of Arizona's state park system.
The park encompasses most of a down-dropped block of Palaeozoic rocks on the east flank of the Whetstone Mountains in the Coronado National Forest. It is carved out of limestone and filled with spectacular speleothems which have been growing for 50,000 years and longer, and are still growing due to careful development and maintenance.
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[edit] History
The caverns were apparently unknown to man until 1974, when Randy Tufts and Gary Tenen, two amateur spelunkers found a narrow crack in the bottom of a sinkhole, and followed the source of warm, moist air toward what ended up being more than 2½ miles of pristine cave passages. Hoping to protect the cave from vandalism, they kept the location a secret for fourteen years, deciding that the best way to preserve the cavern — which was near a freeway — was to develop it as a tour cave. After gaining the cooperation of the Kartchner Family and working with them for ten years, together they decided that the best way to achieve the goal of protection through development as a tour cave was to approach Arizona State Parks. Tufts and Tenen even blindfolded state parks officials before bringing them to the site. In 1985, then-Gov. Bruce Babbitt secretly left the state capitol with two bodyguards and spent three hours crawling through the cave's tight passages to reach the cave's showcase chambers, including the Big Room, Echo Passage and Cul-de-sac Passage.[1] The discovery of the cave was finally made public in 1988 when the landowners sold the area to the state for development as a park and show cavern.[2][3]
The state spent $28 million on a high-tech system of air-lock doors, misting machines and other gadgetry designed to preserve the cave. Kartchner Caverns opened to the public in 1999.
[edit] Popularity
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The cave has proven to be popular; over 750,000 people have visited the system in its first three years of the park's existence, a number over double what was projected in the 1992 master plan for the park.
[edit] Features open to public viewing
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The two major features of the caverns currently available to the public are the Throne Room and the Big Room. The Throne Room contains one of the world's longest (21 ft 2 in/6.5 m) soda straw stalactites and a 58-foot (18 m) high column called Kubla Khan. The Big Room contains the world's most extensive formation of brushite moonmilk; it is closed during the summer for several months (April 15 to October 15) each year because it is a nursery roost for over 1,000 cave bats.
Other features publicly accessible within the caverns include Mud Flats, Rotunda Room, Strawberry Room, and Cul-de-sac Passage.
[edit] Animal Life
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This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2009) |
Although the cave is largely uninhabited, bats do nest in the Big Room during late spring.
[edit] Undeveloped sections
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This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2009) |
Several sections identified by the discoverers have not been prepared for visitors:
- Thunder Room
- Grand Canyon
- Subway Tunnel
- Mushroom Passage
- Pirate's Den
- Granite Dells
- Echo Passage
[edit] Multimedia
Virtual tour from the Arizona Daily Star
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- Neil Miller, Kartchner Caverns : how two cavers discovered and saved one of the wonders of the natural world, 2008, University of Arizona Press. ISBN 9780816525164
[edit] External links
- Arizona State Parks: Kartchner Caverns State Park
- Friends of Kartchner Caverns State Park
- Discovery and History
- Journal of Cave and Karst Studies (ISSN 0146-9517 ), Volume 61(2), August 1999
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