Day 53 - Caves and Animals

Day 53 - Thursday - Caves and Animals

The promised sunshine is here!  We do get an early start and arrive at the National Park a little after 8am.  On the way down we see a couple of bison and lots of prairie dogs, but no ferret this time.  Although there are several cave tours, there is only one we can take because of Vicky's knees, and this one is only offered 4 times daily.  We have no problem getting tickets for the first tour of the day, but that's not for a coupe of hours.

Plenty of things to do to fill the time.  We start with the orientation movie, learning more about the history of the exploitation of the cave as well as the unique rock formations - more about that later.  There are plenty of exhibits to see, which give us more details.  In the 19th Century you could get 150 acres of land in the West for free if you built a home, developed the land and stayed for 5 years.  The MacDonald family - Jesse and his 2 sons Aaron and Alvin, knowing that this area had extensive underground caves, put in a claim for the land and were given the rights to it.

Alvin in particular, although only a teenager, explored the caves and discovered the underground beauty, especially boxwork, a rock formation found in few other places in the world.  He spent almost all of his time in the cave, and with his father's help, opened it up to people who wanted to visit.  The family made money from these tours and also for selling boxwork and other rocks taken from the cave - that doesn't fly today!

In 1891 MacDonald formed a partnership with John Stabler.  Together they widened passages in the cave, installed wooden staircases and even built a hotel on the surface.  In 1893 Jesse and Alvin MacDonald went to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago to promote the cave.  Calvin, unfortunately, died of typhoid on the return trip.  Subsequently Jesse and John Stabler got into arguments about their business arrangement, which culminated in Stable suing Macdonald.  In 1899 the court ruled that neither party had fulfilled the requirements of the Homesteading Act, so the land reverted to the government.  In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt created the National Park.  Goes to prove you shold keep your business arrangemnts above board and not go to the courts!

We enjoyed the Garden of Eden tour.  You enter and leave the cave by elevator (no, Calvin did not build it!)  but still negotiate 150 steps underground.  We marveled at the boxwork and other formations, different from other caves we've seen.  This is essentially a dry cave today, so there are none of the usual stalagmites and stalagtites.  It's still amazing.  enjoy the photos!

We had lunch in Hot Springs and then decided not to go to the pool, which turned out to be merely a large swimming pool.  Instead we returned through Wind Cave National and Custer State Park, and were rewarded by seeing a swift fox as well as pronghorn and buffalo.  We drove the Wildlife Loop road again and found the bison herd just before the Visitor Center.  We also spotted pronghorn and deer on the way home.