The natural entrance to Carlsbad Caverns
LOCATION
- Carlsbad Caverns is located in the Guadalupe Mountains and the Chihuahuan Desert.
FACTS ABOUT THE LOCATION
- Jim White discovered the caves when he was a teenager in 1898 and used a hand made wire ladder to explore the caves. He couldn't convince the locals that the caves were real for about a decade.
- Carlsbad Caverns is one of 300 limstone caves
- The caves were carved out by large amounts of sulfuric acid.
- The Chihuahuan Desert is the largest and wettest desert in North America.
- The Guadalupe Mountains used to be part of a reef more then 250 million years ago and contains many different fossils.
- Inside the caves the temperature is 56 degrees year round.
- Over 400,000 bats use the caverns as a home during the summer.
ACTIVITIES TO DO IN THE NATIONAL PARK
- There are many different tours of the caves to take.
- There are also camping and hiking trips through the Guadalupe Mountains.
- You can see the Witch's Finger and other large rock formations during the tours.
The Witch's Finger was formed by wet limstone that dripped off the ceiling and hardened from the floor up.
The Veiled Statue is a formation of stalactites.
This is called the Christmas Tree because of the slow on a formation of stalactites. This formation is located in Slaughter Cavern
