Blanchard Springs Caverns

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Blanchard Springs Caverns is a cave system located in the Ozark National Forest in Stone County in northern Arkansas, 2 miles off Highway 14 a short distance north of Mountain View.^[1] Blanchard Springs Caverns is a three-level cave system, two of which are open for guided tours. The Dripstone Trail runs through an underground fantasy in the upper level of the caverns. The Discovery Trail on the second level opened in 1977. The Discovery trails runs through the middle of the cavern. They also offer a "Wild Cave" tour which allows access to undeveloped parts of the cave to more adventurous visitors.

The temperature is a constant, year-round 58° F (14° C). The limestone rock from which the caves and their formations developed was laid down in an ancient sea more than 350 million years ago. It remains a "living" cave in part because of the care given by visitors and the United States Forest Service. Living caves are ones in which slow metamorphosis due to minerals deposited by seeping and dripping water is still in process.

[edit] History

Local residents knew about the caves by the 1930s when the first attempts to explore the caverns occurred. The first systematic exploration of the cave began in 1955 and went for five years. In 1955, explorers discovered a 1000-year-old Native American skeleton in the cave. How this explorer entered the cave is a mystery. The caverns were opened to the public in 1973 after ten years of development on the Dripstone Trail. Blanchard Springs Caverns got its name from the caves source, Blanchard Springs.