An Unplanned Stop

Paradise Lost Formation, Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve

We left Burney Falls and headed to Redwood National Park. Both of those locations are in California, but we decided to take the scenic route, which would loop us a little through southern Oregon. 

We’re tooling along, anticipating arriving in Redwood National Park fairly early. One of the towns we drove through was Cave Junction, Oregon, right near the California border. And, we saw a sign for Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve.

A National Monument neither of us had been to? In a place we might never pass through again? 

The Illinois Valley Visitor Center (yeah, it seems like everything in the west is named after the midwest) was right on the corner, so we pulled in. 

Information is available in Cave Junction, Oregon

We found out that the actual Monument was about 45 minutes away on a road that winds through mountains and dead-ends at the Park. 

It's a pretty drive on a narrow, winding road

And, we found out there were just a few slots available for the 2:00 p.m. 90-minute “Discovery” tour. We also found out that the cave had 500 steps (some carved stone and some installed) and a couple of narrow, low (45 inches) places that might require duck-walking. 

The tour; Map: Wikipedia Commons

We had time. We’d been in caves before and figured we could handle the tight spots (with a little trepidation). So, what the heck. We reserved two slots and took off for a cave tour. 

I applaud the Park for using the Visitor Center right on the highway instead of making people go to the VC in the Park to get information. It would be frustrating to drive the long, narrow road to the Park to find out that no slots were available for tours. 

We had plenty of time allotted for Redwood. We’d be fine.

About Oregon Caves 

Photo: NPS

Tucked away in the northern Siskiyou Mountains, Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve is 20 miles east of Cave Junction on Oregon Route 46. 

Oregon Caves protects 4,554 acres of wilderness, a main cave and eight smaller caves that have been found so far. 

The caverns are “solutional caves” formed in marble rather than the limestone or dolomite that forms most dissolved caves. 

The main cave’s “parent rock” was originally undersea limestone formed about 190 million years ago, but heat and pressure metamorphosed it into a marble block that is now at least 1,080 feet long, 490 feet wide and 390 feet high. 

Tectonic movements lifted the block to 4,000 feet above sea level long before the cave began forming. 

Looking up at a dome structure

Slightly acidic groundwater started seeping into cracks, eventually dissolving enough marble to expand some of the cracks to the size of tunnels. The cave is thought to be at least a million years old, but probably not much older than a few million years. 

It's a wet cave

The cave has a number of formations, including stalactites, which hang from cave ceilings like icicles, and stalagmites, cone-shaped masses that form on cave floors, usually directly below stalactites. These structures form when acidic groundwater with a high concentration of dissolved calcite drips slowly from the ceiling of an air-filled cave, becomes less acidic and leaves some of its calcite behind as a solid precipitate.

Stalactites, stalagmites and soda straws; Photos: Caty Stevens

Although many of the formations in the public sections of the cave have been broken, discolored by human skin oils or otherwise damaged (indeed, early tourists were encouraged to break off pieces and take them home), the narrow twisting passages of the "show cave" have been largely preserved.

These stalactites are damaged from being touched

The cave is not pure marble; other minerals have been deposited by surface streams. It has passages totaling about 15,000 feet, most of which are not open to the public.

Five bat species are found in the cave: Townsend's Big-eared bat, and Long-eared, Fringed, Long-legged and Yuma Mouse-eared Bats. To protect them from white nose syndrome, a fungus that disrupts bats’ hibernation, resulting in starvation and death, visitors must not take any clothing or equipment into Oregon Caves that have previously entered any other cave or mine.

Bats at Oregon Caves; Photo: NPS

Inside the cave, the temperature is always about 44°F. So, of course I wore a jacket, which I didn’t really need. They always overstate how cold a cave will be. I hope I never wore that jacket in another cave. I don’t think I did, but I have had it a long time. Allegedly white nose spores can survive years of washing.

Although people have lived in southwestern Oregon for at least 8,500 years, no evidence has been found to suggest that any native peoples used the cave. Largely bypassed by early explorers, fur traders and settlers because of its remote location, the region attracted newcomers in quantity when prospectors found gold in the Rogue River valley in 1851.

Elijah Jones Davidson, who discovered the cave in 1874, had emigrated from Illinois to Oregon with his parents, who settled along Williams Creek about 12 miles northeast of the cave.

 

The first known person to enter the cave; Left photo: NPS

Davidson claimed he found the cave when he chased his dog into the pitch black cavern and that once he held onto a rope and jumped into a pit, presumably to his death, just to have the rope stop him inches from the rock floor. But many of his stories were considered tall tales.

Clipping: NPS

Walter Burch, an acquaintance of the Davidson family, tried to develop the cave as a business, calling it “Limestone Caves” and charging visitors $1 each for a guided cave trip, camping spot, pasture for horses and “medicinal” cave water. The trails to the cave from Cave Junction and Williams were crude, making the trip too difficult for most tourists. Limestone Caves ceased operations in 1888.

Early visitors toured with candles; NPS

In the early 1890s, the Oregon Caves Improvement Company, headed by Alfonso Smith of San Diego and several partners from nearby Kerby, Oregon, tried to raise capital for a larger tourist business. 

Smith made outlandish claims about the cave and its business potential, saying that it was 22 miles long, that an ordinary horse and buggy could be driven through 10 miles of it, that it had 600 separate chambers and that the company planned to build a streetcar line from the town of Williams to the cave. 

The San Francisco Examiner twice sent reporters to the site. On the second visit, there was "an orgy of destruction" in which passages were widened, formations broken or deliberately removed and directional arrows added to cave walls. In 1894, after Smith had spent all of the company's money and borrowed more in its name, he disappeared and the business collapsed. Several other private attempts to develop the area failed.

None of the developers owned the cave or the land around it, but no one cared until the 1890s, when the government began regulating the use of public lands.

Established in 1909; Photo: Caty Stevens

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt designated millions of wild acres for protection, including the forest around the cave. The United States Forest Service (USFS) was created in 1905 and three years later, the new Antiquities Act allowed the President to designate National Monuments. 

In 1909, President William Howard Taft established Oregon Caves, which was managed by the USFS. A year later, USFS hired men to guard the cave and serve as tour guides.

The growing popularity of the automobile, construction of paved highways and tourism promotion led to increases in cave visitation during the late 1920s and thereafter. Private developers built campsites and rustic cabins along highways near Cave Junction and the Monument. 

In 1923, the USFS signed a contract with the Oregon Caves Company to run the cave tours and improve the Park accommodations. They completed The Chalet, a building with a kitchen, dining room, gift shop, ticket sales area and dormitory for women Oregon Caves Company staff members, later that year. 

The Chalet, 1928; Photo: NPS

Three years later, the company added seven two-bedroom cabins for tourists and a dormitory for male employees. In 1928, Oregon Caves received funds for electric lights, a power plant, a system of pipes and hoses to wash mud from the cave and an artificial exit tunnel to eliminate the crowding that occurred when two groups on round-trip tours had to pass one another.

 

The main entrance

The National Park Service assumed control of the Monument in 1933 and a six-story hotel, the Oregon Caves Chateau, was completed at the site in 1934. 

The Chateau is currently being renovated; Photo: NPS

During the 1930s and early 1940s, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) installed water and telephone lines, improved trails and worked on landscaping at the park.

The Chalet was rebuilt in 1942 to include a third story and a larger dormitory for women. By 1968, a total of one million people had visited the cave. In 1987, the Chateau was declared a National Historic Landmark and, in 1992, 60 acres of the Monument, including the Chateau and other rustic structures, were listed as the Oregon Caves Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 2001, the NPS began running the cave tours formerly offered by private contractors, and two years later all the structures at the Monument became public property managed by the NPS. The non-profit Illinois Valley Community Development Organization runs the gift shop.

The Visitor Center

In 2014, the Park was expanded by about 4,000 acres and re-designated a National Monument and Preserve. At the same time, the segment of the creek that flows through the cave was renamed for the mythological River Styx and added to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

Our Experience

The tour, led by a very enthusiastic young Ranger, was enjoyable and not as bad as I dreaded. The low passage wasn’t bad at all, mainly because it wasn’t very long. Some of the stairs are more like a hybrid of stairs and ladders, making them a little scary in the dim cave. 

Steps in a dark cave

But, I prefer them to the carved uneven stone steps, especially the ones without railings. Although humans are not supposed to touch cave walls because of the damage skin oil does, I had to several times to maintain balance. I would vote for more railings.

Unlike other caves I have toured, Oregon Caves seems small. It is mainly a series of small caverns strung together by pathways. 

A paved floor

Some of the passages between two chambers are natural and some constructed. 

There are no giant caverns like you see at Carlsbad Caverns or Mammoth Caves. I have visited a lot of caves and this one was perhaps the least impressive. But, I still enjoyed the tour. 

The monument has more than 50 paleontological sites ranging in age from Late Pleistocene to Holocene. We saw a fossil of a Grizzly Bear more than 50,000 years old that is preserved where it was found in the cave. 

Other fossils found in the cave include a Jaguar between 40,000 and 20,000 years old, amphibians, a rare Mountain Beaver and a Blue Grouse. Most fossils are in non-public sections of the cave.

So, with our stamps firmly in our National Park Passports, we drove back down the windy road toward Redwood National Park as the skies started to cloud up. We were a couple of hours late, but we were glad we made the stop.

"Moon milk" formation creates a heart on the wall

Trip date: July 29 - August 5, 2023