Carlsbad Caverns National Park
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This is one of the one of the more remote parks in the National Park system. The nearest interstate highway is about one hundred and fifty miles away to the southwest at El Paso, Texas. US highway 62/180 climbs up out of the Rio Grande River valley east into the Guadalupe Mountains, which are of the same geologic formation as that of the Carlsbad Caverns, the ancient Capitol reef of 200 million years past. The Park itself contains nearly one hundred caves and caverns and covers an area of 46,766 acres. It was first established as a National Mounument Octber 25, 1923 and on May 14, 1930 it was designated a National Park. While most of the things to see are underground, there are also hiking trails and back country camping.
This is the natural opening to the caverns There are two ways into the Caverns. One is the paved trail down through the natural opening to the floor of the first cavern. This first cavern is where bat guano was once "mined". The next cavern that is glimpsed is the bat cave and stretches back into the dark. That is also where the bats live and every night throughout the summer, fly up and out through the opening shown above. The trail leads down into the Great Room. The other way to the main cavern that most of us understand Carlsbad to be is an elevator. It drops or rises to a height of seven hundred and fifty-four feet. So that you can have a better idea of that distance, let me point out that the observation deck of the Space Needle is seven hundred and twenty feet high.
The Big Room is a single large cavern shaped like a "T". There is a wheel chair friendly trail around the one mile perimeter of this Cavern. The cavern encompasses an 8 acre area and is full of speleothems. That is the term for all of the different cave formations. There are of course the ones that we are familiar with like Stalactites and Stalagmites. The others I don't think I could describe to you or spell. But we both know where you can learn of them and the many other things about Carlsbad Caverns. Just Click Here
photos by Michael T. Sherer |
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