Each week, we'll be featuring a place of interest around Cleveland, site of Gay Games IX in 2014. Cleveland, Akron, and Northeast Ohio are great places to visit, and are also great places from which to experience some of the finest destinations in the USA and Canada.
This week we're featuring caves and caverns (there are people who like that sort of thing).
Mary Campbell Cave
Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
It is believed that in 1759, a 12-year-old girl was captured in Pennsylvania by people of the Delaware tribe and brought to a cave in present-day Gorge Metro Park, where she lived as a child of Chief Netawatwees. Young Mary Campbell, for whom the cave is named, unwittingly became the first European child in what was then the wild frontier of the Western Reserve. Mary later settled with the tribe in a village along the banks of the Cuyahoga River, not far from the cave. She was released in 1764 after a treaty ended the French and Indian War.
Thousands of years before Mary's adventures, the Gorge was cut when glacial debris blocked the former route of the Cuyahoga River (near present-day downtown Akron) and caused the river to find a new course. Today, the rushing water flows over a shale riverbed, between ledges made of Sharon conglomerate sandstone. Oak, blackgum, tulip and yellow birch trees are common in the woods that cover the valley walls.
This 155-acre Metro Park was made possible in 1930, when the Northern Ohio Traction & Light Company, the predecessor of Ohio Edison, donated 144 acres of land to Metro Parks. Previously, the area hosted a park of a different sort – the High Bridge Glens Amusement Park, which opened in 1882 and featured a thrilling rollercoaster and a dance hall..
More info HERE.
Ohio Caverns
West Liberty, Ohio
Ohio Caverns is a show cave located 30 miles from Dayton, Ohio near West Liberty, in Salem Township, Champaign County, Ohio in the United States. A popular tourist destination and member of the National Caving Association, it is the largest of all the cave systems in Ohio and contains many crystal formations. Approximately 90% of its stalactite and stalagmite formations are still active. The cavern system was originally an aquifer, holding an underground river of melted glacier water. This river eventually receded to lower levels of the ground and is now unseen.
More info HERE.
Luray Caverns
Luray, Virginia
Luray Caverns have drawn many visitors since their discovery in 1878. The underground cavern system is generously adorned with speleothems (columns, mud flows, stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, mirrored pools, etc.).
The caverns are perhaps best known for the Great Stalacpipe Organ, a lithophone where a mechanical device taps stalactites of various sizes to produce tones similar to those of xylophones, tuning forks, or bells.
More info HERE .
Howes Caverns
Howes Cave, New York
Imagine stepping into an elevator that takes you 156 feet below the Earth's surface. When the elevator stops, the doors open into a prehistoric underground cavern six million years in the making. As you exit into the Vestibule, your imagination takes hold.
As your eyes adjust to the underworld, shadows hide secrets in every crack and crevice. Sound echos off the walls and ceiling, reminding you of just how deep you have descended and what surprises await you in the underground wonder.
You don't have to be a serious caver or spelunker to appreciate the geology of Howe Caverns. Your specially trained tour guide will help you negotiate the cave and learn about the magnificent limestone formations, the stalactites, stalagmites and flowstone, and the tremendous conservation effort underway to protect and preserve Howes Caverns.
More info HERE.
Onondaga and Cathedral Caves
Leasburg, Missouri
Onandaga Cave: Trained guides will lead you over electrically lighted paved walkways and provide information about geologic wonders such as the King's Canopy, the Twins, and other unusual speleothems. With an interesting history and a river flowing through the cave, Onondaga Cave is a spectacular registered National Natural Landmark.
Cathedral Cave: The cave is 5,639 feet long, and the trip from the river entrance to the commercial entrance is about 5,600 feet. The remainder of the cave consists of a few side passages and the portion known as "Upstream Cathedral," which was not mapped until the 1970s, due in part to its own characteristic of being intermittently "detestable." Most, if not all, of Cathedral Cave is hollowed in the Gasconade dolomite, which was laid down approximately 440 million years ago. The cave consists of two distinct sections: a dimensionally larger and presumably older passage with its entrance high on the campground valley hillside; and the much longer, narrower, younger and lower (both in passage size and elevation) cave stream passage, which intersects the stream at right angles near the Cathedral column - the premier speleothem in the cave.
More info HERE.
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