Luray Caverns

Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Fri 30 Sep 2011 20:27
The Luray Caverns
 
 
 
 
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The Luray Caverns draw many visitors including us since its discovery in 1878. The underground cavern system has an amazing range speleothems (I’ve always wanted to type that), columns, mud flows, stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone and mirrored pools. The caverns are perhaps best known for the Great Stalacpipe Organ, a lithophone made from solenoid fired strikers that tap stalactites of various sizes to produce tones similar to those of xylophones, tuning forks, or bells.

 

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Bear dwarfed in this huge area

 

Geology: The Caverns are in the Shenandoah Valley just to the east of the Allegheny Range of the Appalachian Mountains in Luray, Virginia. The Valley extends from the Blue Ridge in the north to the south end of Massanutten Mountain. Cave Hill, nine hundred and twenty seven feet above sea level, had long been an object of local interest on account of its pits and oval hollows or sinkholes (known as karst) through one of which the discoverers of Luray Caverns entered. Luray Caverns does not date beyond the Tertiary period, though carved from the Silurian limestone. At some period, niches and already formed chambers were completely filled with water, highly charged with acid, which then slowly began to eat away at much of the softer material composing much of the walls, ceilings and floors. One particular area that shows this high level of water is Elfin Ramble where water marks of oscillation are highly visible on the ceiling. The temperature inside the caverns is uniformly twelve degrees Centigrade.

 

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Speleothem formation: there it is again. As with other limestone or "solution" caves, formations at Luray Caverns result from a solution of calcium carbonate giving up some of its carbon dioxide, thus allowing a precipitation of lime to form. This precipitation begins as a thin deposit ring of crystallised calcite, but continues to collect, creating stalactites and other types of dripstone and flowstone. Formations at Luray Caverns are white in color if the calcium carbonate is in its pure form. Other colors reflect impurities in the calcite resulting from elements absorbed from the soil or rock layers: reds and yellows due to iron and iron-stained clays; black from manganese dioxide; blues and greens from solutions of copper compounds. Luray Caverns remains an active cave where new formation deposits accumulate at the rate of about one cubic inch every one hundred and twenty years.

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The "Fried Eggs" rock formation

 

Celebrated speleothems: After the water had receded mostly by a lowering in the water table, these eroded forms remained and growth began to take hold via stalactites, stalagmites and columns. Some notable formations include the Leaning Column, undermined and tilting like the campanile of Pisa; the Organ, a large shield formation, that was used from very early on as an instrument to a variety of folk and religious songs and a vast bed of disintegrated carbonates left by the water in its retreat through the great space called the Elfin Ramble.

 

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The cavern is yellow, brown or red because of water, chemicals and minerals. The new stalactites growing from the old, and made of hard carbonates are usually white though often pink or amber-colored. The Empress Column is a stalagmite thirty five feet high, rose-colored and elaborately draped. The Double Column, named for Professors Henry and Baird, is made of two fluted pillars side by side, one twenty five feet the other sixty feet high, a mass of snowy alabaster. Several stalactites in Giant's Hall exceed five feet in length. The Pluto's Ghost, a pillar, is a ghostly white.

The cascades are formations like foaming cataracts caught in mid-air and transformed into milk-white or amber alabaster. Brands Cascade, a particularly fine one, is forty feet high and thirty feet wide, and is a wax-like white.

 

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Saracen's Tent is considered to be one of the most well-formed draperies in the world.

 

 

Streams and true springs are absent, but there are hundreds of basins, varying from one to fifty feet in diameter, and from six inches to fifteen feet in depth. The water in them contains carbonate of lime, which often forms concretions, called pearls, eggs and snowballs, according to their size. The quantity of water in the cavern varies greatly at different seasons. Hence some stalactites have their tips under water long enough to allow tassels of crystals to grow on them, which, in a drier season, are again coated over with stalactitic matter giving distortions. The dimensions of the chambers cannot be easily measured, due to the great irregularity of their outlines. There are several tiers of galleries and the vertical depth from the highest to the lowest is two hundred and sixty feet.

 

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Luray Cavern waters: There is a spring of water called Dream Lake that has an almost mirror like appearance. Stalactites are reflected in the water making them appear to be stalagmites. This illusion is often so convincing that people are unable to see the real bottom. It looks quite deep, as the stalactites are higher above the water, but at its deepest point the water is only around twenty inches deep. The lake is connected to a spring that continues deeper into the caverns. The Wishing Well is a green pond with coins three feet deep at the bottom. Like Dream Lake, the well also gives an illusion, however it is reversed. The pond looks three or so feet deep but at its deepest point it is actually six or seven inches deep.

 

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History: Five men local men discovered the Luray Caverns on the 13th of August 1878. Three were Andrew J. Campbell (a local tinsmith), his 13-year-old nephew Quint and local photographer Benton Stebbins. They saw a limestone outcrop and nearby a sinkhole had cool air coming out of it. The men started to dig and about four hours later, they had dug a hole big enough for the smallest men (Andrew and Quint) to squeeze through, slide down a rope and explore by candlelight. The first column they saw they named the Washington Column, in honour of the first US President. Entering an area now known as Skeleton's Gorge, bone fragments and artifacts were found embedded in calcite. Traces of previous human occupation included pieces of charcoal and flint embedded in stalagmite. A skeleton, thought to be that of a Native American girl, found in one of the chasms, was estimated, from the current rate of stalagmitic growth, to be not more than five hundred years old. Her remains may have slipped into the caverns after her burial hole collapsed due to a sinkhole, although the real cause is unknown. They are now in storage at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

 

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Litigation: Sam Buracker of Luray owned the land on which the cavern entrance was found. Because of uncollected debts, a court-ordered auction of all his land was held on the 14th of September 1878. Andrew Campbell, William Campbell and Benton Stebbins purchased the cave tract, but kept their discovery secret until after the sale. Because the true value of the property was not realised until after the purchase, legal wrangling ensued for the next two years with attempts to prove fraud and decide rightful ownership. In April 1881, the Supreme Court of Virginia nullified the purchase by the cave discoverers. William T. Biedler of Baltimore (Buracker's in-law and major creditor) then sold the property to The Luray Cave and Hotel Company, a subsidiary of the Shenandoah Railroad Company. David Kagery of Luray and George Marshall of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, purchased the property in July 1890 and in October of that year the tract was sold to the Valley Land and Improvement Company. Under bankruptcy proceedings in 1893, the property was bought by Luray Caverns Company, owned by J. Kemp Bartlett of Baltimore.

Despite the legal disputes, rumors of the caverns' impressive formations spread quickly. Professor Jerome J. Collins, the Arctic explorer, postponed his departure on an ill-fated North Pole expedition to visit the caverns. The Smithsonian Institution sent a delegation of nine scientists to investigate. The next edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica devoted an unprecedented page and a half to the cave's wonders and Alexander J. Brand, Jr., a correspondent for the New York Times, was the first professional travel writer to visit and popularise the Caverns.

 

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Sanatorium: In 1901, the cool, supposedly pure air of Luray Caverns was forced through the rooms of the Limair Sanatorium, built on the summit of Cave Hill by Colonel T.C. Northcott, former president of the Luray Caverns Corporation. The Colonel billed "Limair," as the first air-conditioned home in the US. On the hottest day in summer, the interior of the house was kept at a cool and comfortable twenty one degrees Centigrade. By sinking a shaft five feet in diameter down to a cavern chamber and installing a forty two-inch fan powered by a five horsepower electric motor, Northcott’s system could change out the air through the entire house about every four minutes. Tests made over successive years by means of culture media and sterile plates, were considered to have demonstrated the "perfect bacteriologic purity" of the air, purportedly a benefit to those suffering various respiratory illnesses. This "purity" was explained by a natural filtration process with air drawn into the caverns through myriad rocky crevices, then further cleansing by air floating over the transparent springs and pools, the product finally being supplied to the inmates of the sanatorium. (The original "Limair" burned down in the early 1900’s, it was later rebuilt in brick) The Luray Caverns Corporation, which was chartered by Northcott, purchased the caverns in February 1905 and continues to hold the property today. In 1974, the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior designated the caverns as a National Natural Landmark.

 

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Although portions of the Caverns are open to the public you cannot bimble alone. We joined a tour which lasted about an hour and took in all the major formations. The registered number of visitors in 1906 was 18,000, but now, about 500,000 people visit each year. Part of the ticket admission was for the Carriage Museum opposite, time for a toasted sandwich – made to order in the cafe - and of course a quick butchers in the gift shop.

 

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ALL IN ALL THE MOST IMPRESSIVE SPELEOTHEMS I HAVE EVER SEEN
                            VAST LIKE EVERYTHING IN THE US