![]() Tours leave from the gift shop at the entrance. Today visitors take a fifty-minute, one-half mile guided tour down six stories into Colossal Cave to see the beautiful formations. Recent studies show it once served as a Hohokam shrine. The cave was officially "discovered" in 1879, but artifacts and soot-blackened ceilings testify to use by prehistoric cultures. Today, Colossal Cave is "dry," or dormant, and the formations are no longer growing.Ĭolossal Cave Mountain Park is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it certainly has a history. As the climate became more arid, the cave gradually dried up. Over millions of years, stalactites, stalagmites, columns and draperies formed slowly from water dripping from the ceiling. Groundwater seeping through the Escabrosa limestone formed the cave. Due to the enormously complex three-dimensional maze, it took over two years to map the two miles of passageway that are fully explored. The cave is not fully explored, but scientists estimate that there are at least thirty nine miles of natural tunnels inside the cavern. Located in the Rincon Mountains at an elevation of three thousand seven hundred feet, the entrance commands a panoramic view of the Sonoran Desert. ![]() One of the largest dry caves in North America, it maintains a pleasant seventy degrees Fahrenheit temperature year-around. It's always perfect weather for touring Colossal Cave, just twenty two miles southeast of Tucson, Arizona. Reservations recommended for tours.Colossal Cave Sonoran Desert - Vail, Arizona Just keep your eyes peeled for gold-filled railroad bags, and don’t forget to look out for Fang and his sneaky stalactite brothers.Ĭolossal Cave Mountain Park, 16721 E. Whichever underground adventure you choose, Tucson’s caves are a fun way to escape the desert heat and explore a hidden side of Arizona unknown to most visitors. Spelunking enthusiasts can visit two other major cave networks in the Tucson area: Kartchner Caverns State Park, easily accessible on a day trip, and Peppersauce Caves, for more adventurous travelers. Picnicking and camping are also available in campgrounds created by the CCC. The park complex has stables offering trail rides, a petting zoo with fuzzy llamas and stubby goats, a butterfly garden, and a meet and greet with Cienega and Shelly, two desert tortoises. The 2,400-acre Colossal Cave Mountain Park is now about more than just the caves. ![]() Cocktails and campsitesīecause it takes about 1,000 years for a stalactite to add an inch to its length, the Colossal Cave Mountain Park isn’t waiting for geology to take the lead in adding features to the attraction.Ĭolossal has recently expanded its visitor options to include ladder tours to more inaccessible spots intermediate and advanced “wild cave” adventure tours, complete with headlamps and helmets toddler tours, where kids are welcome to squall like fruit bats ghost-hunting night tours and candle tours for the brave and Friday and Saturday happy hour tours with beer, wine and bright pink prickly pear margaritas. Their pickaxes and other tools are preserved along with Native American artifacts in display cases along the tour route. This public service project during the Great Depression sent dozens of young men to live in tents in the desert and construct the cave pathways and visitor center that are still in use. More recent (and more verifiable) human interest stories about the caves include a look at the Civilian Conservation Corps’ role in developing the caves as a tourist attraction in the 1930s. At night are the howling sounds just the wind escaping through small passages, or are they the mournful cry of a railroad bandit on an eternal search for lost loot? Visitors are left to wonder whether there are Wells Fargo mail bags filled with gold coins hidden in one of the side caverns. In ensuing gun battles, some were killed, others caught, but the riches were never recovered. The bandits made off with the loot and were tracked to these caves. One wild but true cave story is how in the 1880s a gang in the area stopped and robbed several cash-rich mail trains. ![]() Wild West tales abound about these caves and perhaps provide more entertainment value than historical accuracy. Colossal Cave tours highlight not only the natural history of the destination but also the human one. ![]()
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