The beauty under Hell Canyon

Cabin houses at the original cave entrance

Hell Canyon vistas.

More Hell Canyon, which is not hellish. 

A friend of mine once said all caves are the same. I never bought into that. 

Three seconds into the elevator descending into Jewel Cave, I caught the distinct smell of underground moisture, not unlike my grandparents’ wine cellar. When the doors opened 200 feet below the surface, a different cave experience awaited. 

From Newcastle, Jewel Cave was closer than I realized. A few blocks from Newcastle, I was enveloped by the Black Hills and quietly crossed into South Dakota. The road gradually rose in elevation, then took a steep, winding course around the edge of Hell Canyon, home to Jewel Cave National Monument. I stopped at the Historic Cabin, where the Historic Lantern Tours depart for the cave’s natural entrance in the canyon. Until 1972 when the elevators opened, this was the only way to experience Jewel Cave. 

 The protected area covers less than 1,300 acres, even with the world’s fifth-largest cave beneath the surface. Even the natural entrance isn’t entirely natural. As a barometric cave, its discoverers found air flowing from a small hole and widened it to enter Jewel Cave. 

Upon spying the calcite formations that formed its walls, the Michaud brothers dubbed it Jewel Cave. Nailhead spar and dogtooth spar are common in the cave, the latter gaining its name from resemblance to canine teeth. Previous knowledge from local Natives is unclear, but Jewel Cave does not have the same cache as Wind Cave does for the Lakota, who consider its natural entrance the place where the bison and their people emerged into this world. 

Even close to the road, the birdsong gets loud in the canyon. When Theodore Roosevelt declared it a national monument in 1908, only a mile of cave had been explored. For decades, that encompassed what visitors could explore. 

When caving couple Herb and Jan Conn moved to the Black Hills in the 1950s, more than 200 miles have been explored since, with spelunkers finding natural ponds where the cave extends below the water table, forcing more recent explorations to extend laterally. More cave becomes uncovered all the time, when scientists take four-day journeys into the dark. 

The Scenic Tour covers what had been a remote portion of the cave until construction of the elevators. Covering a half-mile and 700 stairs underground, it felt like the best choice for a first-timer. 

After a refreshing hike in the canyon, I burnt some time on trails by the visitor center waiting for my tour. People were turned away for lack of reservations; in summertime, walkup tickets are tough. I reserved mine a few weeks earlier, when I decided upon dates. 

Everything in this Black Hills trip revolved around the tour, since it was the only event pinned to a time. The elevator descends to a staging room, where we waited until the whole tour arrived to enter the actual cave. 

Cave colors. 

Boxwork

Did I mention I love boxwork?

Popcorn.

The condensation immediately became present everywhere. The metal railings and stir grates felt damp. As the day on the surface roared into the 80s, Jewel Cave stayed a comfortable 49 degrees. Everyone else on the tour wore either long pants or a long-sleeved shirt, but after a week of record temperatures and high 90s in Colorado, I felt just fine in shorts and a T-shirt. The tour includes 700 steps (up and down) and I actually felt warm after a few of the longer stretches. 

Buttered popcorn. 

 Jewel Cave definitely comes off as more dynamic than Wind Cave, the latter best know for its boxwork formations (Jewel Cave has some boxwork but much variety of cave formations). Most formations are extraordinarily rare and fragile – frostwork looks as delicate as it sounds, and gypsum flowers form from thin ribbons of stone. 

Draperies extend out of the stone like tendrils, reminding me of some formations in Mammoth Cave. So much of what exists in Jewel Cave appears only here. Hydromagnesite balloons, formed off cave popcorn and frostwork, can only be seen on the Wild Cave Tour and nowhere else in the world. Caves like Jewel give us the impression of a living space, where millions of years transpire while rock takes stunning new forms. 

Along the Scenic Tour, a ribbon of flowstone formed by long-moving water known as “cave bacon” runs 20 feet. Soda straws extend down from the ceiling – unlike other formations, the tour guide told me the straws are relatively new, forming in a few thousand years, a blip compared to others in Jewel Cave. 

The guide pointed out the New Moist Room, a cave that had been dry until the Park Service bored the elevator shafts. That action penetrated the shale layer near the room, which had served as a moisture barrier. Now the room has become a test subject for Jewel Cave and other park-owned caves to see if development leads to negative impacts. The smell of wine cellar faded as we ascended to the surface. 

As with the rest of the Black Hills, Jewel Cave beckons one back, with the prospect of a historic lantern tour as a fresh view on a future stop.