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No, you can’t modernize a cave, but the degree of fun in some dark, damp, cool spaces has been on the rise in recent years.
The story goes that two boys chased a rabbit in a hole in the Virginia mountains in 1879. A pretty deep hole, it turned out to be—deep enough that when they looked above them at some point, one of the boys got pretty excited.
“Carrots! Turnips!” he said. “We have found the bottom of a farm.”
They had no idea that they were looking at stalagtites and soda straws, hanging from a cave’s ceiling. And who would have guessed their point of discovery would one day become part of the Endless Caverns near New Market, Virginia? Turns out, that’s how many caverns have been discovered—by accident.
As for myself, I plotted cavern discoveries for more than a year, seeking stalagmites from Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
“Have you been to any other caverns around here?” asks my joke-cracking Skyline Caverns tour guide, 18-year-old Kaylin Ketola, in Front Royal, Virginia.
“I’ve been to Shenandoah, Luray, Natural Bridge, Dixie,” I began, then started to add more names, like Appalachian, Bristol, Gap Cave at Cumberland Gap, Forbidden Caverns, Tuckaleechee, Grand, Ruby Falls, Organ Cave, The Lost Sea-–WHEW!
“So all of them?” Ketola asks.
Well, not all. But I made rounds to about a dozen in my quest to find what’s legendary, what’s unique—and just how these old-school attractions are really not your daddy’s caverns.
Cell phone cameras are constantly clicking in crowds, where millennials now capture what’s millions of years old. Kids snap selfies with stalagtites and pose like dolls with dripstone.
“And you don’t have to modernize something like this,” says Luray Caverns tour guide Katie Nauman in Luray, Virginia.
“The beauty of a cave speaks for itself,” says Connie Trompeter Browning, the owner of Dixie Caverns near Salem, Virginia. “It’s breathtaking. Every time you see something unusual, it catches you.”
Cool Caves
Legends and lore flow like flowstone in the underground when tales turn to liquid.
Once, it’s said, moonshiners hunkered in stone-sided bunkers, braving bats in caverns to concentrate on their concoctions.
Today, you’ll see evidence of moonshine stills at the Forbidden Caverns of Sevier County, Tennessee, and the Smoke Hole Caverns near Petersburg, West Virginia.
Checking the weather: Temperatures usually remain in the 50s year-round in the underground. “And as soon as I tell them it’s 54 degrees, they buy the ticket,” says Burton Blessing, tour guide for Grand Caverns in Augusta County, Virginia.
Such cool temps are why Bristol Caverns, just below the Tennessee-Virginia border, once were chosen for a few city council meetings.
But, watch out: Bristol Caverns is also where you might hear the ghost of Betty Bishop, a woman who was so beautiful that she was killed and dumped into this cavern by a jealous competitor looking for love.
Don’t despair.
When it comes to true love, do like dozens of others and get married beneath “The Wedding Bell” of Dixie Caverns. You can also tie the knot between a rock and a hard place at Virginia’s Endless Caverns.
Or march arm-in-arm down to Cathedral Hall at Skyline Caverns, where more than 150 weddings have taken place. “And either they’re getting off to a rocky start,” says Ketola. “Or they’re rock solid.” …
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The excerpt above is from our May/June 2019 issue. For the rest of the story, and more like it, subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription. Thank you!
