2012 August 18, Wind Cave, South Dakota

Saturday, August 18 and we were off exploring once again.  This time we were off to Wind Cave National Park, located 10 miles north of the town of Hot Springs in western South Dakota.  Established in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt, it was the seventh U.S. National Park and the first cave to be designated a national park anywhere in the world.  The cave is notable for its displays of the calcite formation known as boxwork, intricate, honeycombed structures are formed through a mysterious process still debated by geologists.  The unique combination of events and chemistries used to form the structures has rarely been repeated.  About 95 percent of the world's discovered boxwork formations are found in Wind Cave.  Wind Cave is also known for its frostwork.  The cave is currently the fifth-longest in the world with 137.02 miles of explored cave passageways, with as average of four new miles of cave being discovered each year. Barometric wind studies estimate that just about 5 to 10 percent of the total cave has been discovered Above ground, the park includes the largest remaining natural mixed-grass prairie in the United States.

Wind Cave was named for the wind that blows out of or into the natural opening, a small hole in side of the hill.  Changing atmospheric pressure outside the cave causes the air outside to adjust.

The Lakota (Sioux), Indigenous People who lived in the Black Hills of South Dakota, spoke of a hole that blew air, a place they consider sacred as the site where The Lakota first emerged from the underworld where they lived before the demiurge creation of the world.

The first documented discovery of the cave by early explorers was in 1881 by brothers Tom and Jesse Bingham.  They heard a sound of wind rushing out from a 10-inch by 14-inch hole in the ground.  According to the story, when Tom looked down into the hole, the wind was blowing out so hard that it blew his hat off of his head.

The Park offers several cave tours from one to four hours in length.  We took the one and a half hour tour with a Park Ranger.  The Ranger, showed us the original opening to the cave (see top photo).  Luckily we did not have to crawl into that opening!!!!

We enjoyed our tour of the cave, the Park Rangers always provide such interesting information!

More later from the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Until then,

Candy and Johnny from the road.