During a trip to South Dakota last summer, I had the opportunity to visit two National Park Service (NPS) units that each have a cave as the primary feature. While Wind Cave National Park and Jewel Cave National Monument are separated by only 30 miles, to a visitor’s eye, the caves are very different. Jewel Cave possesses an array of speleothem (cave formation) types while Wind Cave possesses only a few.
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Wind Cave National Park covers an area of about 44 square miles of surface terrain while Jewel Cave National Monument occupies only 4 square miles. Both parks were established to protect very large caves. Wind Cave is considered to be the 7th longest cave in the world (3rd in the United States) with 150 miles of passageways currently mapped. Jewel Cave is believed to be the third longest cave in the world and ranks second in the U.S. To date, 209 miles of passageways have been explored and mapped. About 55% of the Jewel Cave is actually outside the surface boundaries of the national monument. Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, also part of a national park, is believed to be the world’s longest cave.
Both Jewel and Wind Caves are examples of hyperbaric or “breathing” caves. Since they are so large, they are basically huge air pockets in the rock with one or more small above-ground orifices possessing an air pressure system that adjusts the cave’s atmospheric pressure to equal that at the surface. When a high-pressure system rolls in, air is forced into the cave in an attempt to equalize the pressure. Under low pressure surface conditions, air is expelled from the cave for equalization. This moving of air into and out of the cave is called breathing. Caves with only small openings to the surface demonstrate breathing much more obviously than cave systems with many or large openings. This breathing process is scientifically useful because careful measurement of air movement allows scientists to learn something about the size of a cave from the amount of air that moves in and out. While airflow measurements cannot tell you how many miles long a cave is because you cannot distinguish between features such as long passageways and large volume rooms, such measurements do allow you to calculate the total volume of a cave. Air flow studies suggest that, currently, only about 10% of Wind Cave has been mapped and as much as 95% of Jewel Cave is still undiscovered.
You might wonder why Wind Cave is designated a national park while Jewel Cave is a national monument. Public land designations stem primarily from the reasons for which a given park was established. Congress creates national parks to set aside places possessing some outstanding feature or natural phenomena which needs to be preserved for future generations. Typically, these places have inspirational, educational and/or recreational values. National monuments can be set aside by presidential proclamation for their historic, prehistoric or scientific interest although Congress does also have the authority to establish monuments. Currently for a place to be designated as a national park, it must encompass an area large enough to allow for broad usage making it administratively feasible (there are a few small parks that were established in the past). National monuments do not have any size criteria. They often do not have a very large administrative footprint and usually far less physical infrastructure. Most monuments are administered by the NPS of the Department of the Interior although some are supervised by the U.S. Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture or the Department of Defense if they have military significance.
Wind Cave has a much larger terrestrial footprint and offers more varied recreational opportunities than Jewel Cave. Although there is an historic area and a couple of hiking trails, the cave is the monument’s main attraction. This likely explains the difference in designation between Wind and Jewel Caves.
Wind Cave
Although Wind Cave has long been known by native peoples (more about that later), Tom and Jesse Bingham are given credit for its discovery in 1881. The legend is that they heard the sound of rushing air coming from a 10-inch diameter hole in the ground, and while investigating the sound, the force of the air stream blew the hat right off Tom’s head. It must have been a day of low barometric pressure!
In 1889, the South Dakota Mining Company established mineral claims involving the cave and hired a man named Jesse McDonald to serve as manager of the claim. However, when no commercially useful minerals were found, McDonald decided to try to make money from the cave by turning it into a tourist attraction.
Jessie’s 16-year-old son, Alvin, did the early exploration of the cave and served as its first tour guide. He explored the first 8-10 miles of the cave using only a candle for light and a ball of string so he could find his way back out of the cave each time. Alvin kept a diary of his explorations that is transcribed on the NPS Wind Cave website. He drew the first map of the cave naming some of the rooms and passageways.
Unfortunately, Alvin contracted typhoid fever while championing the cave at the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. He died at age 20 and is buried near the natural entrance of his beloved cave.
Congress established Wind Cave as a national park in 1903 at the urging of President Theodore Roosevelt. It became the eighth national park and was the first to protect a cave. In 1934, a Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) camp was established at Wind Cave. The young CCC workers developed a significant amount of the park’s infrastructure including a walk-in cave entrance, a 208-foot elevator shaft, concrete steps, lights, and a visitor center.
To explore Wind Cave, you must take a ranger-led tour. There are three tours (shown on the map above) that follow paved, lighted paths – Garden of Eden (green), Natural Entrance (purple), and Fairgrounds (brown). The Garden of Eden Tour route is the least strenuous at 1/3-mile long with 150 stairs. The Natural Entrance route is 2/3-mile long with 300 stairs and takes about 1 hr and 15 minutes to complete. These two tours are considered moderate although the Garden of Eden probably could be classified as easy. The Fairgrounds Tour route is 2/3-mile long with 450 stairs and is considered strenuous. It takes 1.5 hours to complete. All tours involve walking up and down stairs although they are mostly downward steps. Unless you are vertically challenged like me, you need to be able to crouch under some low ceilings which can be only 5’2″ high in places. A Candlelight Tour exists which, at the time I visited, was not being offered. To be able to participate in a tour, you should book a reservation at recreation.gov. Although there are a small number of tour tickets reserved for purchase on-site for each day’s tours, your chances of being able to get one of them are very slim.
I chose to see the cave on the Natural Entrance Tour which starts at, drum roll, the cave’s natural entrance which is the hole you see in the photo below. Although originally smaller, this hole was enlarged during early exploration as this was how you got into and out of the cave.
The tour begins with the tour guide explaining why the cave entrance is sacred to the Lakota people.
According to Lakota beliefs, they emerged from the spirit world through an opening termed Maka Oniye or “breathing earth” (hence Wind Cave). According to their story, the creator told the people to wait in the spirit world until Earth was ready for them to inhabit. A trickster spirit, in the form of a wolf, came with food and clothes to tempt the people to leave, and some of them took the bait and emerged.
However, when winter came, these people were not prepared for the conditions and tried to return to the spirit world only to find the portal blocked. As punishment for their disobedience, the creator turned them into bison. When Earth was ready, those who had obeyed the creator emerged. The Lakota were instructed to follow the bison because they would provide necessities for life. The creator then shrank the entrance to the passage enough so they could not return through it while never forgetting from where they had come.
After hearing this story, we entered through a door and walked down a flight of stairs into the cave.
Formation of Wind Cave
Caves are classified by the type of rock in which they form: igneous, limestone, or sandstone. Limestone caves such as Wind Cave often tend to attain great size.
About 350 million years ago, the region of the Black Hills was covered by a warm, shallow sea containing an abundance of shelled invertebrate sea life. As they died, the calcium-rich shells and skeletons of these marine animals fell to the bottom of the sea depositing calcium carbonate (CaCO3) along with gypsum, a hydrated form of calcium sulfate (CaSO4.2H2O). Over time, these deposits compacted into a layer of limestone 300-630 feet thick. Since this sea was very shallow, water came and went which caused the gypsum to swell (hydrating) and shrink (dehydrating) resulting in the cracking of the limestone. Over time, gypsum migrated into the cracks forming calcite crystals which are more resistant than the surrounding limestone itself.
About 320 million years ago, the salt-rich ocean receded and was replaced by fresh water. Normal rainwater dissolves carbon dioxide from the atmosphere which makes it weakly acidic. When gypsum reacts with this acidic water, it is converted into calcite releasing sulfuric acid, an acid strong enough to dissolve limestone creating passages in the rock. Over the next 240 million years, seas periodically appeared and disappeared depositing more limestone along with sandstone and red clay. About 40-60 million years ago, tectonic forces uplifted the Black Hills increasing the sizes of the limestone cavities. These cavities were probably filled with water for long periods of time enlarging small cracks into larger cavities generating a complex maze-like pattern.
Formation of Speleothems
The formation of speleothems (cave formations) is a process more or less the opposite of the one which forms the passages that make up a cave. When rainwater percolates through soil, it picks up carbon dioxide generating weak carbonic acid which dissolves small amounts of calcium carbonate from the rock. As this aqueous solution seeps into the air-filled chamber of a cave, it releases the carbon dioxide (a process identical to how CO2 is evolved when you open a bottle of soda pop). Loss of carbon dioxide causes the solution to lose its acidity (i.e. the flat taste of your soda pop after the fizz is gone). The calcium carbonate cannot remain dissolved in non-acidic water. As a consequence, calcite precipitates on the ceiling, walls and floors of the chamber building a variety of speleotherms such as those shown in the diagram below.
Wind Cave is atypical in that it does not possess many of these common types of speleothems. This is caused by the constant movement of air into and out of the cave which keeps it relatively dry. One thing you will not hear when touring Wind Cave is dripping water. Since it is not as wet as many other caves (although at the lowest level there is an aquifer that passes through), there are almost no stalactites and stalagmites. Instead, it has unusual formations called boxwork, frostwork and cave popcorn.
In Wind Cave, the acidic water that percolated into the cave dissolved the rock surrounding the calcite-filled cracks remaining from the original gypsum. This left behind the resistant, but delicate, crystal “fins” shown in my photos below. These honeycomb-like formations are called boxwork. Boxwork speleothems are very rare and about 95% of the entire world’s boxwork formations are found in Wind Cave. This boxwork which hangs from the ceiling and lines many of the cave walls is what makes Wind Cave so unique.
Cave popcorn, small, knobby growths of calcite, is another type of speleothem found in Wind Cave. This popcorn forms via one of two mechanisms: (1) water seeping out of a limestone wall precipitating calcite where the water drop was; or (2) water dripping from a wall or ceiling to splash on the floor or a ledge along the wall. The splashing action causes carbon dioxide to escape precipitating calcite where the splash hit.
One other unusual speleothem found in Wind Cave is frostwork – delicate, needle-like calcite or aragonite (chemically similar to calcite) growths often found growing on boxwork or cave popcorn.
Although the mechanism of its formation is unclear, it is believed that evaporation is involved as frostwork is found in the greatest amount in passages having above average airflow.
Structurally, Wind Cave is a 3-dimensional maze of passages that are arranged vertically into upper, middle and lower levels. The Garden of Eden Tour enters and exits the cave via an elevator and visits an upper level area where you can see some cave popcorn and boxwork.
My Natural Entrance Tour began by going through a door near the natural entrance and descending a very long series of steps into the middle level of the cave. The route of this tour went through passages extensively lined with boxwork and cave popcorn. The tour ended by returning to the surface via the elevator.
The Fairgrounds Tour traverses some of the cave’s larger rooms on the middle and lower levels. This tour is highlighted by boxwork, cave popcorn and frostwork along with a few other speleotherms.
Jewel Cave
Jewel Cave was discovered in a manner similar to Wind Cave. In 1900, two brothers, Frank and Albert Michaud were prospecting in Hell Canyon when they heard air rushing out of a small hole in the ground. The hole was too small to see inside so they returned later with some dynamite and a friend, Charles Bush, and enlarged the hole.
Upon entering the cave they were dazzled by the sight of beautiful crystals sparkling like jewels in the light of their lantern. Sure that they had struck the mother load, they filed a mining claim for the “Jewel Tunnel Lode” on October 31, 1900. They were disappointed to find no valuable gems or minerals in the cave and decided to turn their claim into a tourist attraction. Over the next several years, they constructed a trail in the cave and built a log cabin “lodge” on the rim of the canyon. They even organized the Jewel Cave Dancing Club to try to attract tourists. Sadly, the rural setting and difficulty of travel to the cave made the business venture unsuccessful. Although the attempt to turn the cave into a tourist attraction failed, the beauty of the cave’s “jewels” attracted the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt who declared it a national monument for preservation purposes on February 7, 1908, and the claim to the cave was sold to the government for $750. In 1928, the Jewel Cave Corporation was formed by a group of businessmen and served as a concessionaire providing tours to the public for the next eleven years.
In May 1935, the CCC established a camp at Jewel Cave and provided needed infrastructure including removing the original log “lodge”, building a 3-room cabin, comfort stations, a public campground, water and sewage lines for both the cabin and campground, an improved cave entrance, a surface trail and stone stairway. In 1939, an NPS Ranger was allocated to the monument to provide visitor services and conduct cave tours.
Until 1959, only two miles of the cave were known, and, although it had its jewels, there were concerns about the cave being a site of national significance. This concern prompted an expedition to explore the cave more fully. Two of the members of the expedition, noted rock climbers named Herb and Jan Conn, were persuaded to join the exploration. Although originally not very excited about trudging around in the dark underground, they fell in love with exploring the unknown, and over the next 22 years, made 708 forays into the cave. They logged more than 6,000 hours exploring and mapping the dark cave discovering huge rooms, passageways as extensive as half a mile long, and a place where the wind blows up to 32 mph. In all, they mapped over 65 miles of the cave naming features and rooms. Two of the names they gave passages give insight into how difficult their exploration work was: Contortionist’s Delight and The Miseries! The Conn’s work has been expanded by new explorers, but the majority of the cave still remains a mystery.
Like at Wind Cave National Park, to explore Jewel Cave, you must take a ranger-led tour. There are three tours (shown on the map above) – the Scenic Tour (red), Historic Lantern Tour (yellow), and Wild Caving Tour (blue). There is also a 20-minute, wheelchair accessible Discovery Talk that involves an elevator ride to a large room in the cave but no touring. During this option, a ranger talk provides an introduction to the natural and cultural history of the cave.
The Scenic Tour route covers a 1/2-mile loop that includes 734 stairs on a paved, lighted trail. It is classified as moderately strenuous and takes 1 hour and 20 minutes to complete. This tour is limited to those 6 years or older. This is the option I chose for exploring the cave.
The Historic Lantern Tour route is classified as strenuous. It follows an early explorers’ path using only a handheld lantern as your light source. This tour involves climbing steep stairs (including steep wooden ladder-like steps) and areas where you must walk while bending and stooping. This tour is a 1/2-mile long with 600 steep narrow steps and takes 1 hour and 45 minutes.
The Wild Caving Tour explores an undeveloped section of cave. This is an extremely strenuous 1/2-mile route that takes 3- to 4-hours to complete where you will use a rope assist to climb a nearly vertical wall and belly-crawl through tight passages. To qualify for participation on this tour, you must demonstrate that you can crawl through an 8.5 x 24″ opening in a concrete block. Minimum age for this tour is 16 with parent or guardian permission.
While there is no charge to enter the monument, you must purchase tickets for cave tours. It is advisable to book tour reservations in advance at recreation.gov since tours typically sell out early in the day at the cave March-October.
| Discovery Talk (year round) | Scenic Tour (year round) | Historic Lantern Tour (early June-late August) | Wild Caving Tour (mid June-mid August) | |
| Adult (16 & over) | $6 | $16 | $16 | $45 (must be at least age 16) |
| Youth (5-15) | $3 | $8 | $8 (must be at least age 8) | – |
| Child (5 & under) | Free | Free | – | – |
Formation of Jewel Cave
The initial stages of the formation of Jewel Cave parallel those of the formation of Wind Cave. However, the topography above Jewel Cave is a bit different than that of Wind Cave and had a wetter microclimate. About 40 million years ago, rainfall increased locally causing ground water to rise and flood the cave from below for extensive periods of time. The acidic water in the cave carved away the limestone becoming supersaturated with minerals.
Eventually, the water slowly drained away, and the mineral load precipitated, coating the cavern walls with calcite crystals called spars. At one point in time, the walls of Jewel Cave were covered almost 100% by spars. Although pure crystals of calcium carbonate are colorless, impurities of other elements can impart colors such as white, yellow or red.
The vast majority of the cave’s wall coating is in the form of nailhead spar. This type of spar resulted from moving water eroding the pointy ends of the crystals so they became flat resembling the flathead of a nail. Many of the crystals left behind as the water receded became covered with fine silt making crystals like those to the right appear dull gray, and they do not sparkle.
Dogtooth spar is composed of spear-shaped crystals that are reminiscent of the canine teeth of dogs. These crystals are primarily found in cavities where they were more protected from the erosive action of moving water. These crystals tend to not have a silt coating so they glitter in the light – the “jewels” of Jewel Cave.
Once the water filling the cave drained away, other speleothems began to form by the typical route of percolating acidic water depositing calcium carbonate, drop by drop, forming stalactites, stalagmites, draperies, etc. The type of formation that results is primarily a result of whether the calcite containing water is dripping, trickling or seeping when it enters a cave room or passage. These types of formations are being actively, albeit very slowly, generated today while the spars which only form under water are no longer being deposited.
Soda straws are extremely fragile speleothems that form as water leaches slowly through cracks in the ceiling of the cave forming a tube. Each new water drop makes its way through the straw and hangs at the tip depositing a ring of calcite before dropping to the floor to be replaced by a new calcite-containing drop. When a straw becomes plugged or if water begins migrating on its outside surface, the straw will be converted into a stalactite.
Draperies, a type of flowstone, are generated by water trickling down an overhanging surface. The calcite that precipitates takes on a fabric like shape.
When calcium carbonate laden water drops flow down a sloped ceiling following the same path over and over, calcite can build linearly into a thin strip of drapery. When iron impurities are present, this strip will have reddish-brown stripes. As the formation grows, undulations in the bedrock can cause the drapery to bend and fold. These thin striped draperies are termed “cave bacon”. This particular strip of bacon, seen on the Scenic Tour, is about 20′ long, and my photograph does not do justice to this spectacular feature. These strips of bacon are probably my favorite cave formations.
While most people come to Wind Cave National Park and Jewel Cave National Monument to explore underground, there are a number of surface activities also available to visitors. Jewel Cave, being the smaller of the two parks, has less options for non-cave activities. One can visit the historic area containing an original cabin built by the CCC and the historic entrance to the cave. There are two easy hiking trails, the .25-mile Roof Trail and the 3.5-mile Canyons Trail (trails shown on Jewel Cave tour map above).
Wind Cave National Park has a variety of activities for visitors to enjoy in addition to cave exploration. There are more than 30 miles of designated hiking trails ranging in difficulty from easy to strenuous. In addition, Wind Cave is an open hike park which means that visitors may hike off trail anywhere that they wish providing many options for exploration.
Wildlife viewing is another favorite activity in Wind Cave. Beginning in 1913, bison, elk, and pronghorns were reintroduced to the park restoring these animals to their native range. The Park’s bison herd presently contains 500-550 animals.
While touring the park, I encountered bison, pronghorns, elk, a badger, prairie dogs, and a coyote. There is a delightful prairie dog town where you can spend a significant amount of time watching their antics right from your car parked at the side of the road.
Wind Cave has been at the forefront of trying to save the black-footed ferret, a member of the weasel family native to the Great Plains, from extinction. The species had gone from a population of over 5-million across the plains to only 18 individuals in the wild. Their decline was due to the susceptibility of both ferrets and their primary food source, the prairie dog, to the bacterium Yersinia pestis, commonly known as the plague. While Yersinia pestis is not native to North America, it was inadvertantly introduced in the early 1900s. A survey found that Yersinia pestis was not present in Wind Cave National Park (in fact, it is mostly absent in South Dakota) making the park a good candidate for ferret reintroduction. In 2006, ferret reintroduction was completed, and today up to 40 ferrets make the park their home. The black-footed ferret is a night hunting predator that catches prairie dogs while they are sleeping in their burrows. Since they are nocturnally active, I was not able to see any on my wildlife forays in the park.
The Black Hills region of South Dakota has a number of wonderful attractions with Badlands National Park, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, Custer State Park and, probably the most famous one, Mount Rushmore so it is a great tourist destination, and I have been there many times.
Although you can visit both caves on a single day, I would suggest that you budget 1.5-days for doing both. An entire day for exploring Wind Cave would allow you to take a cave tour, go for a hike, and drive the roads on the lookout for wildlife. If you are into wildlife viewing, Custer State Park shares a border with Wind Cave National Park and has been likened to a mini version of Yellowstone. You could combine the wildlife drive in Custer with a tour of Wind Cave.
You can do almost everything available at Jewel Cave in about four hours unless you are doing the Wild Cave Tour. If you only have one day in the area, it is possible to experience both caves since it takes about 35 minutes to drive between the two parks. If you are going to fit both caves into a single day, I would suggest that you make reservations at recreation.gov, scheduling one tour early in the morning and the other later in the afternoon.
You have time for only one cave tour, which one should you choose?
Both caves are interesting and worthy of a visit, however, if I was only able to do a single cave tour and no other activities, I would probably choose Jewel Cave because of its variety of beautiful formations.