Terri and I booked a guided tour of the King’s Palace and also did a self guided tour of the Big Room. In comparison to Mammoth Cave, there was much more to see and the cave better lit. You were also allowed to use a flash, which helped get better images. There were many more “decorations” within the cave.; more draperies, stalagmite, stalagmite, columns and bacon. Bacon is a type of wavy drape that forms. The part of the cave we were in is far dryer than Mammoth, therefore little aquatic life. Ranger Chris lead the tour and he was very informative. What Terri and I liked the best was the story of the 16 year old Rancher named Jim White. At the turn of the Century, young Jim was out in the pasture at night and saw, what he described as, a hole of boiling bats. Jim was witnessing a nightly bat flight. As any curious 16 year old would do, he investigated. Young Jim lowered himself into the hole with a metal coffee pot filled with lamp oil. He discovered Carlsbad Cavern. He would explore the cavern often and attempted to get others to join him, however no one in the small town believed his stories of these magnificent findings. One day, a geologist heard of the young boys story and felt, that if any part of it was true, this could be a spectacular find. To make a long story, short, the geologist joined Jim in exploring the cave. This did not occur until the early 1920’s. Imagine this young boy exploring the cave by only a small light from a wick of a make-shift oil lamp. After the Geologist explored the cavern , people now believed the young boy. In the late 1920’s , a journalist from The New York Times decided to do a story. This brought national attention to the Carlsbad Cavern. In the early 1930’s the Cavern went from being a national Monument to a National Park. This was unprecedented, as the country was in the throws of The Great Depression.
This is a gift shop and cafeteria inside the cave!
As you can tell, I took a lot of photos- this was only about half……