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Astonishing Kartchner Caverns - Arizona state park

Sunset, Dec, 1999 by Nora Burba Trulsson

Descend into the eerie, lovely world of Arizona's newly opened cave

Randy Tufts and Gary Tenen didn't mean to set the speleological world on fire when they went poking around in southeastern Arizona's Whetstone Mountains one November afternoon in 1974. Tufts and Tenen, both students at the University of Arizona in nearby Tucson, liked to explore caves for fun. "You usually only find a hole, or a cave that goes-back 10 feet," says Tufts. "Most people don't realize how fruitless looking for a cave usually is.

"We never expected to find anything like this in our wildest dreams."

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The "this" they discovered on that fateful day opened this fall as Kartchner Caverns, Arizona's much-anticipated new state park. Visitors can now tour a good portion of the 7-acre "living," or wet, cave and learn about its environmental significance, which includes spectacular formations, unusual mineralogy, and sheer size.

But 25 years ago, all Tufts and Tenen knew was that the Whetstones were probably a good place to look for caves. The mountains have vast limestone deposits, which tend to dissolve over time from water seepage, eventually forming caves. After several trips, they found a spot where a breeze was coming through a crack in a chamber. They knew this meant there was probably a large, open space below causing air movement. Squirming through a hole the size of a coat hanger and crawling through passages blanketed in bat guano, the men realized they had found something big. Really big. They were the first humans to set foot inside a giant, subterranean jewel box beneath the arid Chihuahuan Desert.

Tufts and Tenen kept the discovery to themselves, fearing the vandalism and careless destruction they'd seen happen at other unprotected caves. They spent a full year exploring the caverns, finding three large "rooms" the size of football fields, numerous passageways, and even a subterranean lake that filled and emptied with seasonal rains. One of the rooms also proved to be a maternity ward for pregnant bats, which return each summer from mating in Mexico to give birth in the cave's protected depths.

Dozens of types of cave formations have been documented here, including stalactites, stalagmites, flowstones, shields, aptly named "fried eggs" and "bacon," columns, and fragile, narrow "soda straws." Kartchner has become known for having one of the longest (21 feet) soda straws in the world, and Arizona's tallest cave column, at 58 feet. The caverns, it was soon discovered, are home to minerals and mineral formations never before found in caves.

To preserve a treasure, a state park is born

Though they were able to keep the caverns secret for a while, the men realized that with their proximity to the community of Benson and a well-traveled state highway, other spelunkers would soon follow. They also learned that the caverns weren't part of state or BLM land as they originally thought. The parcel belonged to local ranchers Lois and James Kartchner.

Tufts and Tenen told the Kartchners what treasures lay beneath their hilly, ocotillo-dotted land and approached them with the idea of preserving the caverns by developing the site into a park in which access would be controlled and monitored. The ranchers agreed, and considered a variety, of development options.

In 1984, the Kartchners and the explorers decided that the state park system would be the best organization to preserve the caverns. The Kartchners sold 550 acres above and around the caverns to the state, creating a new park where environmental awareness and preservation, rather than recreation, were the key elements.

"A living, wet cave is not that unusual in many parts of the world," says Ken Travous, executive director of Arizona's state parks, "but this one is because it's underneath the desert."

Work on developing the park took 11 years because of the fragile environment, says Travous. To prevent damage to the still-growing formations, workers who built the accessible trails that wind through the cavern rooms used hand-held equipment to tunnel from one room to another. They also monitored the bats to make sure the construction activity didn't disturb their birthing cycle. A series of conservation chambers kept constant the cave's 99 percent humidity and its 67 [degrees] temperature. At one point, when a worker accidentally dropped a bucket into a mudflat at the bottom of the cave, the crew waited until seasonal rains created a small lake, lifting the bucket. Taking care not to make waves that could snap stalactites, a volunteer paddled slowly out in a rubber raft to retrieve the bucket.

The environmental stewardship message comes across clearly when you visit Kartchner Caverns. You can picnic and hike in the park, which is at the base of the mountains, or you can opt for a one-hour guided tour of two of the caverns' large rooms (it is hoped that the third room will open in the near future). A 22,000-square-foot visitor center has a theater, displays about the regional flora and fauna, a re-created section of the cave, and even a series of rocks with a hole the size of the one Tufts and Tenen first squeezed through to reach the caverns. Kids are encouraged to wriggle through the hole and touch the re-created cave formations, because inside the cave, wriggling, touching, and snapping off souvenirs are prohibited.

Astonishing Kartchner Caverns - Arizona state park

Sunset, Dec, 1999 by Nora Burba Trulsson

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