Though the Black Hills themselves are made predominately of granite, beneath the surface lies hundreds of feet of limestone. And where there’s limestone… well, usually there are caves. Such is the case in the Black Hills region.
I recently wrote about our visit to Wind Cave National Park. As a national park, this is the most well-known of the Black Hills caves. However, a small, lesser-known national monument is actually home to a cave that’s much larger than Wind Cave.
Welcome to Jewel Cave: the second longest cave in the US and fifth longest in the world – and that’s just based on the amount that’s been mapped so far (over 200 miles/61 km), which is estimated to be a very small percentage of the total.
Jewel Cave is named for its extensive collections of calcite crystals (which explorers thought were quartz, and therefore entered the cave in search of gold), making for a rather sparkly tour.
The only way to enter the cave is on a ranger-led tour. Jewel Cave offers four of them, ranging from the accessible and family-friendly Discovery Tour to the rugged Wild Caving Tour. Though we weren’t going on the Wild Caving Tour, we decided to see if we theoretically could by squeezing ourselves through the concrete block outside the visitor center that’s representative of the smallest passageway one must navigate during the tour.
Though it was terribly ungraceful, I made it through. My husband almost immediately got stuck.
I guess it’s a good thing we’d purchased tickets for the Scenic Tour instead.
The Scenic Tour begins at the manmade entrance to Jewel Cave, accessed by an elevator inside the visitor center. After the requisite safety spiel, we boarded and descended more than 200 feet (61 m) to an underground room outside the cave entrance. We then entered the cave and found ourselves in a large room.
Over the next 80 minutes, we navigated over 700 stairs and 0.5 miles (0.8 km) of distance as we looped our way through Jewel Cave. The terrain varied from passageways that required us to duck to avoid hitting our heads to giant rooms, one of which was 110 feet (33 m) tall!
The décor inside the cave varied as well. In addition to the calcite crystals, we also saw stalactites and stalagmites, various shades of red rock, and soda straws, cave popcorn, and cave bacon.
(As a side note, why are so many cave features named after food? Spelunkers must be constantly hungry during their cave explorations.)
Right: a long strip of cave bacon
As usual, all photos were taken with my iphone, which does okay – but not great – inside a cave. But hopefully the images below give a general idea of what you can expect to see inside the cave.
My impression is that many visitors to the Black Hills region tour Wind Cave and skip Jewel Cave entirely. And if you don’t have time to tour both, I think I probably would recommend Wind Cave over Jewel Cave solely for its extensive boxwork, which is an exceedingly rare cave feature.
But if you have time to do both, I think it’s worth it. Despite their proximity, the two caves are very different. We really enjoyed both and felt it was worth the time and money.
And with this, we’ve wrapped up our Memorial Day weekend in the Black Hills. The following morning, it was time to pack up our campsite and head back home.
But stay tuned; our summer adventures are just beginning!
Up next: a new edition of my snapshots from the sky series
The Important Stuff:
- Getting there: Jewel Cave National Monument is located about 15 minutes west of Custer, South Dakota on US Highway 16.
- Fees and passes: entry to Jewel Cave National Monument is free. Entry to the cave is by guided tour only and requires a paid ticket. About half of the tickets can be purchased online starting 60 days in advance. The remaining half are available in-person beginning at 8:00am the day of the tour. We visited on a holiday weekend and tickets were sold out by early afternoon, but during other times of year there is likely more availability.
- Hiking: though the Scenic Tour is only 0.5 miles (0.8 km) in length, it requires navigating over 700 stairs. Note that the ranger will also turn out all the lights at one point during the tour, so it may also not be a good choice for anyone who is afraid of the dark.
- Where to stay: there is no campground or overnight lodging of any kind in the monument, but the nearby towns of Custer and Hill City have various accommodations, and there are many campgrounds in the area as well.
- Other: note that closed-toed shoes are required on all Jewel Cave tours. If you’re also planning to tour Wind Cave, the same shoes can be worn in both caves, unless you’re doing the Wild Caving tour, in which case nothing that went into Wind Cave is allowed to enter Jewel Cave to protect against the spread of white nose disease in bats.
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