KARTCHNER CAVERNS STATE PARK

'Kartchner Caverns State Park' () is an Arizona state park, located nine miles south of the town of Benson and is considered by many 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.

Contents

History

Popularity

Features open to public viewing

Undeveloped sections

References

External links

History

The caverns were apparently unknown to man until 1974, when Randy Tufts and Gary Tenen, two amateur cavers found a narrow crack in the bottom of a sinkhole, and followed the source of moist air towards what ended up to being over 2½ miles of pristine cave passages. In the desire to avoid vandalism, the discoverers kept the location of the passages a secret for years; deciding that due to the cave's close proximity to a freeway and population centers the best way to protect the cave was to develop it as a tour cave, their story was finally made public in 1988 when the landowners sold the area to the state for development as a park and show cavern. ''From personal accounts'' and ^[1]

Popularity

The caves have 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.

Features open to public viewing

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' 2") soda straw stalactites and a 58-foot 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 15th to October 15th) each year because it is a nursery roost for over 1000 cave bats.
Other features publicly accessible within the caverns include ''Mud Flats, Rotunda Room, Strawberry Room, and Cul-de-sac Passage''.

Undeveloped sections

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

References

1. Underground fantasy Barbara Yost

External links

★ State Park website

★ Friends of Kartchner Caverns State Park

★ Discovery and History

★ Journal of Cave and Karst Studies (ISSN 0146-9517 ), Volume 61(2), August 1999