The Cave of the Winds is one of the American West’s most historic caverns, having been shown continuously to the public since 1881. With more than two miles of known passageways, the cave is exquisitely decorated with breathtaking stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, and rare beaded helictites. Visitors today tour through much of the system following winding solutional passages leading deep into Temple Mountain. Overlooking rugged Williams Canyon and the resort community of Manitou Springs, the Cave of the Winds is one of the highest commercial caves in the United States with an elevation of seven thousand feet above sea level.
This book tells the story of the Cave of the Winds, from the initial nineteenth century explorations by the young Pickett boys and George Snider to modern-day discoveries by cavers with the Williams Canyon Project of the National Speleological Society. It is a story of two former competitive caves joined together through a 1929 excavation into a majestic single system that extends through a mountain. As an 1888 cave advertisement proclaimed, “They are without a rival for beauty, grandeur, dryness and ease of access combined.”
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