Categories: TRAVEL

Visiting Jewel Cave in the Black Hills South Dakota

The Black Hills in South Dakota are full of wonders. People from all over the world flock to the area to see man made attractions such as Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse, but it is important not to forget the natural wonders such as Jewel Cave, the second longest cave in the world.

There is no record of Jewel Cave before 1900, when two brother felt cold air blowing from a small hole in the ground. They used dynamite to expand the hole and enter the cave. The inside was filled with shimmering calcite crystals, so they named it Jewel Cave, added wooden walkways, and opened it for tourists.

I went to the cave on a scorching hot July day, mostly because the temperatures inside were always around the upper 50s. That sounded just about perfect. I signed up for a long cave tour, and had a few minutes to wander around the visitor center and gift shop before I gathered with my group in front of two elevator doors. The elevators were different, there was no walking down a set of stairs into Jewel.

In the early 1900’s Jewel Cave was much more difficult to reach than it is today, and visitors were few. By 1905 most of the backers had pulled out, and it was looking as though the cave might fade into obscurity. But word had reached Washington DC, and in 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt named Jewel Cave a National Monument, giving it some Federal protection and support.

When the Park Ranger who was to be our tour guide arrived he made a passing comment about this being the first day the elevators were back in use. They had both broken the week before, stranding a group in the cave. He told us not to worry, since they had been testing them the day before, and anyway there were stairs if we needed them. We laughed, assuming this was just part of the cave tour, but one of the elevators did fail again while we were in the cave, and larger group had to be broken up. My tour group was small and we only needed one.

The inside of the cave was as cool as I’d hoped, and we found the Calcite formations that gave the cave it’s name right away. Our ranger guide had spent years exploring Jewel Cave before taking the part-time job offering tours, and was confident that Jewel would eventually pass Mammoth Cave in Kentucky as the world’s longest cave.

The 1910s and 1920s saw various attempts to improve tourist activity at Jewel, including a dance club. New owners appeared every few years, until 1933 when the National Park Service took over the administration of the cave, and civilian work groups improved the roads and added building to the site. As facilities improved, interest in the cave increased, though by the late 1950s only two miles had been explored and mapped.

My tour was two hours long, and actually took a bit longer. Jewel Cave is immense, and with it’s limestone and quartz formations, different areas of the cave have much different appearances. There are stalagmites and stalactites, though they are small for the cave’s 60 million year age, since the dense woodland above limits the amount of water drifting down. Jewel still has some impressive formations, with a long strip of ‘bacon’ (a quartz ribbon that looks like bacon) and melted rock (which is actually dissolved rock that appears melted).

In 1959 two cave explorers arrived at Jewel Cave. Herb and Jan Con doubled the cave’s mapped length in their first two years of work, and interest increased as it became clear Jewel was much larger still. Over the next twenty years the Cons mapped another 64 miles of cave, and others have joined in their work. Jewel cave is now mapped at over 150 miles, and scientists believe this might only be two percent of the cave’s total volume.

My tour ended and we took the elevator back above ground. Jewel Cave had been a marvel, and feel as though, even though I had seen a lot, there was still more to see. The guide was entertaining and informative, and the pace didn’t leave me feeling as though I had been rushed through. The cave itself is stunning, and should be on anyone’s list of things to see while in the Black Hills.