Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills

by Luella Agnes Owen

Hot Springs and Buffalo Gap are both included in the wide-spread view. Beside the road and scattered about in all directions are fine specimens of agates and quartz crystal which seem most beautiful and most abundant on the hills in the immediate vicinity of the cave, the crystals being either rose pink, pale green, yellow, white or colorless.

Arriving at the cave, the entrance is not visible, but between the ravine in which it is located and the road, there is the cave office and small hotel, on the ravine side of which an outer stairway leads down to the cave entrance, over which has been built a log cabin.

On account of the precautions taken for the protection of visitors, accidents are so rare that it might almost be said that none occur. Every person is required to register before entering the cave and all returning parties are carefully counted, although they are usually unaware of the fact. They are always accompanied by two guides and others are added if the party is large. No one is, on any account, permitted to wander in advance of the head guide or linger behind the one in the rear.

Within the cabin the immediate entrance to the cave is securely closed, and in order that the door may not be forced from its fastenings by the roaring wind which shakes it threateningly, it opens in, instead of out. This wind suggested the name Wind Cave, and will probably be utilized, at no very distant time, to generate electricity for lighting the cavern.

The wind is strongest at the surface, and a guide goes down first to place lights in sheltered nooks where the force has begun to diminish, about fifty feet below the entrance; and here we light our candles which, if guarded somewhat, are not extinguished unless the current is unusually severe. The balance of the descent of one hundred and fifty-five feet from the surface to the first chamber is easily accomplished.

This would be the least interesting room in the cave if it were not the Bride's Chamber, on account of having once been the scene of a marriage ceremony. But no others are in need of assistance of such romantic nature, as all are curiously and handsomely decorated, with such a charming variety of deposits, artistically massed, combined or contrasted, that every step brings fresh pleasure, and monotony is nowhere.

Passing from this room by a long, narrow passage, in the walls of which are observed many beautiful little pockets of crystals, attention is presently called to Lincoln's Fireplace, a perfectly natural specimen of the old-fashioned design broadly open in the chimney; doubtless just such an one as Mr. Lincoln's good mother hung the crane in and set the Dutch oven before. A little beyond and on the opposite side of the crevice is Prairie-dog town, not a very extensive town, to be sure, but so true a copy that one unfamiliar with the small animal and his style of architecture would afterwards easily recognize both. At one time his dogship was carried away by a too eager collector, but a letter to the suspected visitor brought him home by the next freight.

The Dutch Clock occupies a position on a shelf near by, and all southern visitors greet the Alligator as a familiar friend, as all of us joyfully meet any acquaintance from home.

A long narrow passage, formerly a "tight crawl," but later opened up by heavy blasting, must be traversed before we come to the Snow Ball Room, beautiful with round spots of untinted carbonate of lime, as if fresh soft snow had been thrown by the handful over walls and ceilings, with the additional ornamentation of calcite crystals. In the crevice beyond rises the Church Steeple, diminishing regularly, though roughly, in size, to a height of sixty feet, but not degraded with the little squirming stairway usually seen in Church spires.

The next room is the Post Office, in which we are for the first time introduced to the greatest peculiarity and most abundant formation known to the cave. Being a newly discovered addition to geology it has no scientific name and therefore is simply called box work, because it resembles boxes of many shapes and sizes. The formation of the box work is generally regarded as an unexplained and unexplainable mystery, but a careful study of various portions of the cave shows it in all stages of development and suggests a reasonable theory as to the cause of its origin and variety of development. The volcanic disturbances which have already been discussed as having been responsible for the various uplifts and depressions of the Black Hills region, and also for opening the fissures which gave the cave a beginning, must have supplied the conditions that were necessary to the formation of box work. And these preliminary conditions were merely cracks in the rock. By the violence of earth movement the limestone has been crushed, probably when the land was undergoing depression, prior to the upheaval which opened the great parallel fissures. The varying hardness of the rock, as well as proximity to the surface, would readily account for the difference in size of the fractures, which is from one-half inch to twelve inches; the largest being the most distant from the surface. That this crushing was done before the salt waters retired from the region, which was towards the close of the Cretaceous Age, is sufficiently evident in the fact that portions of the Red Beds show similar fractures with the cracks filled with gypsum, and gypsum, as we have already seen, is a salt water deposit.