What do you do if you have an incredible cave system in Texas? Make it bigger! Natural Bridge Caverns, the largest and most-visited commercial cave in the state, announces that it’s poured millions of dollars into a new tour called Hidden Wonders. This tour expands into never-before-toured areas of its Hidden Cavern. This is cool news: guests can now enter an area that was only previously accessible to cavers. It took six years of design and engineering, construction, and planning around guest experiences, and it’s due to open on May 12.
What can you expect inside?
State-of-the-art lighting and even a sound and light show.
What is Hidden Cavern?
The second cavern at Natural Bridge Caverns, which previously never had a natural opening to the surface. Because of this, delicate and elaborate formations grew in this sealed-off area.
What kind of construction was involved?
Workers built a 710-foot exit tunnel, which Natural Bridge Caverns says is “double the length of anything done before,” while doing their best to minimize the impact on the fragile cavern. There’s also now a 1,100-foot walkway expansion which starts with a stainless-steel bridge across the cavern's deepest point at Cathedral Canyon.
Any cool features?
Check out the 5,700-square-foot dome chamber called the Ballroom which serves as an event space. Rent this for your wedding, and no one will ever forget it! There’s also a new viewing area overlooking a massive passage called the Box Canyon, which serves as a natural theater for the sound and light show finale.
But the coolest?
When you exit the tour, you can rest your feet as you glide along a conveyor belt to the surface. The 700-foot-long BAT (belt assisted transport) is the world's first conveyor system ride out of a cavern.
Is it wheelchair accessible?
The Ballroom, as well as the sound and light show, can be accessed by wheelchair with prior arrangement.
So it’s thrilling. Is it also smart?
Yes, this is a Historic National Natural Landmark and a State Historical Site. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Let’s hear the important details.
The guided Hidden Wonders tour takes about an hour, and you need to be able to walk half a mile, which does include stairs. The depth of the tour is 180 feet and the cavern temperature is 70 degrees with 99 percent humidity. The floor of the cave may be wet and slippery.
Besides this new tour, what else is there?
Bats! Here the largest bat colony in the world can be found in Bracken Cave. Each summer evening, they take flight into the sky in a huge swirling cluster that might be, the website says, “the largest single gathering of mammals on earth.” Limited tickets are available to see this. There are also several other tours of different parts of the cave system.
Who first discovered the caverns?
Local cavers in 1960. The site is now family owned and operated by the Wuest family, who continues to work with a caving team to explore new areas in the massive system.
For more, click here.