![]() ![]() Providing shelter for several species of bats, the cave served as a major source of guano prior to becoming a tourist attraction. Apparently he was out searching for stray cattle when he came across the entrance. The cave was originally discovered in 1879 by local owner of the Mountain Springs Hotel, Solomon Lick. Our tour guide Savannah leading us up a series of narrow ladders in the caveĬolossal Cave is a dry cave, which means that there is not water flowing in the cave and the formations are not actively growing. The best part, she didn’t get us lost in there. Savannah said she had only working there for about a month, but they must have given her some great training. She seemed very knowledgeable about the rock formations, the crystals, and the history of the cave. I guess we totally lucked out because it was just the two of us on the tour with our tour guide Savannah. We showed up about 15 minutes early for our tour and were eager to get started. Helmets & headlamps are a must when you are spelunking If you don’t have your own gloves, they do have some available for purchase at their gift shop. You need to wear gloves for the tour, and we happened to have our own that we were able to bring with us. It was just $30 per person, and they provided helmets and headlamps for us. Luckily, after calling the facility, they were able to get us in for a tour that same day. This one was only about 6 inches wide.Īccording to their website, the ladder tour requires reservations and needs to be booked a couple days in advance. Narrow ladders amongst stallagmites and stallagtites in Collosal Cave. Plus, you need to book those tours well in advance because of the advanced nature of the tour and the amount of time they need to plan for the guide staff. Also, we had the pups with us, and we didn’t want to leave them alone in the trailer for that long. And I just wasn’t feeling like getting stuck in a cave. We wanted to do the wild cave tour, but the video on their website shows some extremely skinny people squeezing through some tiny little passages. In case you haven’t noticed, we just aren’t the regular tour kind of people. Waiting at the entrance to Collosal Cave for our ladder tour And they have wild cave tours for intermediate and advanced spelunkers that take you even farther into the depths of the cavern on 3-4 hour tours that traverse narrow passages and let you get a feel for the total darkness of a cave. There is a ladder tour which is about 1.5 hours that takes you a little deeper into the cave. They have a regular tour which takes you on a 45 – 50 minute tour of the cave with information about the rock formations and cave history. The park offers several different options for cave tours. (Note: It appears that the original CCC camp SP-10 was sited at the current location of the El Bosquicito picnic area, but we cannot confirm that).Collosal Cave Mountain Park is on the National Register of Historic Places The former well and stone pump house are at El Bosquecito picnic area. La Selvilla campground has very minimal improvements and a poorly maintained road, but El Bosquecito picnic area is quite nice and features concrete tables, stone stoves and a stone water fountain (now a faucet). The Arizona State Park Service oversaw the work.ĬCC workers constructed La Selvilla campground and El Bosquecito picnic area below the hillside, as well as a pump house to take water up the hill to the cave and visitors’ center. They improved access to the cave itself, built a large visitors’/administration center, laid out a campground and picnic area, opened roads and trails and built a water supply system. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) carried out major work at Colossal Cave and the surrounding park north of Vail AZ (now a suburb of Tucson, but far to the east in the 1930s). ![]()
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