Tour guide Robert Reyes unlocks the wrought-iron gate fit snugly into a shadowy gap in the hillside. While formations vary in earthen tones, the cave's modern history is even more colorful, ranging from outlaws to B-movies, lending Colossal a trait not all caves possess - character. RELATED: Helmet & Headlamp Tour at Kartchner Caverns Tours have been expanded, allowing guests five options: the basic half-mile tour a daytime ladder tour accessing little-seen areas of the cave a nighttime ladder tour that includes dinner under the stars a wild cave tour that follow the footsteps of early explorers and a candlelight tour. An outdoor kitchen and restaurant comes with stunning views from the cave's hillside entrance. Still, Colossal Cave has all the trappings one expects of an ages-old underground habitat, with narrow passageways twisting and turning among layered and colorful deposits.Ī recently completed renovation has enhanced its tourism standing. Local bats, however, still find it comfortable.Īs a result, the cave is not as colossal as it could have been, and pales in comparison to the pristine and still-living Kartchner Caverns 30 miles southeast. In addition, the water source that once fed Colossal Cave is long since gone, its labyrinthine interior declared dead decades ago. (A practice that still continues as on a recent trip when, despite warnings from the guide, a few people groped nearby growths in ways that could only be described as stalagmite harassment.) Other formations sport unnaturally smooth edges and tops, rubbed that way from a thousand wayward, curious hands. Stony nubs poke from ceilings as if cave acne.

The damage stands out nearly 150 years later. RELATED: 7 reasons to visit Colossal Cave

The first visitors were encouraged to take home souvenirs, so they plucked formations within reach. Those who tour Colossal Cave east of Tucson can only imagine what wonders would exist within if environmentalism been a thing in the late 19th century. Until 1879, when a hand reached up and snapped off a few million years of geological work, because that stalactite sure would look good in a frontier living room.

Stone flowed and fused, creating gravity-defying formations that remained undisturbed for ages. VAIL – For millions of years the cave grew underground, sculpted in darkness over eons.ĭrop by drop, granule by granule, it happened. View Gallery: Discover a subterranean world at Colossal Cave

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