![]() ![]() ![]() Tours leave from the gift shop at the entrance. Today visitors take a fifty-minute, one-half mile guided tour down six stories into Colossal Cave to see the beautiful formations. Recent studies show it once served as a Hohokam shrine. The cave was officially "discovered" in 1879, but artifacts and soot-blackened ceilings testify to use by prehistoric cultures. Today, Colossal Cave is "dry," or dormant, and the formations are no longer growing.Ĭolossal Cave Mountain Park is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it certainly has a history. As the climate became more arid, the cave gradually dried up. Over millions of years, stalactites, stalagmites, columns and draperies formed slowly from water dripping from the ceiling. Groundwater seeping through the Escabrosa limestone formed the cave. Due to the enormously complex three-dimensional maze, it took over two years to map the two miles of passageway that are fully explored. The cave is not fully explored, but scientists estimate that there are at least thirty nine miles of natural tunnels inside the cavern. Located in the Rincon Mountains at an elevation of three thousand seven hundred feet, the entrance commands a panoramic view of the Sonoran Desert. One of the largest dry caves in North America, it maintains a pleasant seventy degrees Fahrenheit temperature year-around. It's always perfect weather for touring Colossal Cave, just twenty two miles southeast of Tucson, Arizona. Colossal Cave Sonoran Desert - Vail, Arizona ![]()
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