Our plan on our Thanksgiving road trip was to stop at several National Parks and National Monuments along the way. Our thought was “we are in the area, why not take advantage of seeing these places?”.
If you read my previous posts (Part 1 and Part 2), you know we encountered less than ideal weather conditions throughout the entire trip. We didn’t do any hiking along the way as we had hoped.
One thing we were still able to see was the Jewel Cave National Monument outside of Custer, SD.
No matter what the weather is doing, Jewel Cave is a great option to explore. The cave is protected from the weather (obviously underground) and a constant temperature.
The cave monument consists of over 200 miles of known caves in about a 4 square mile area. In the map in the picture above, you can see the extent of the cave system. The colors indicate the depth of that portion of the cave.
We opted to take the 20 min tour with a ranger that day. The other option was a few hours later and would have been around 90 mins. We’ll come back in the future and do the longer tour.
The tour took an elevator down to the main cave entrance to a large chamber. They have airlock doors between the elevator lobby and the chamber because the cave “breathes”.
This chamber is quite large. Stairs are installed throughout the areas that the tours go, and this chamber is the starting point.
The variety of colors and features in this chamber are beautiful!
The ranger gave us a history of the cave explaining that the Native Americans in the area knew of the cave for hundreds of years, but the original entrance was about the size of a basketball. Then at the turn of the 20th century, some gold prospectors found it and blew the entrance open with dynamite.
They explored the caves extensively and never found gold or any other mineral worth mining. After that failure, they tried another venture only to have one fail as well. As a last-ditch effort, they began offering cave tours. They asphalted paths for the tours and eventually were able to make a bit of a living with that.
Once the park service took over, the asphalt was removed, and other materials were used which are more friendly to the environment of the cave. The tours continue to today.
She then talked about the formations within the cave pointing out a couple of them that I can’t recall the names of. But one was something they referred to dogtooth crystals. They definitely look like teeth!
She also pointed out another mineral that shows up looking like tree limbs or snowflakes depending on exactly where. She said people often think they are fossils but are actually this particular mineral. It was beautiful!
I highly recommend a stop at Jewel Cave. We will be going back when we’re in the area next time. Check it out!