Carlsbad Caverns News

More than a century ago, a teenage cowboy stumbled onto one of America's biggest underground wonders.In 1898, Jim Larken White noticed bats boiling from a New Mexico cave entrance and rode his horse over to investigate. Curious about the cave's depth, he built a fire and let it burn until only embers remained, then carefully kicked the glowing chunks into the cave's entrance to watch them drop.A few days later, White decided to go in.

Go batty over the Brazilian free-tailed bat!

Celebrate the delightful spookiness of Halloween this month with a visit to a national park that is full of dark caves and crawling with bats—Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Established to preserve Carlsbad Cavern and numerous other caves within a Permian-age fossil reef, the park contains more than 100 known caves, including Lechuguilla Cave, the nation's deepest (1,567 feet) and third-longest limestone cave.

Visit Carlsbad Cavern National Park and behold the sight of hundreds of thousands of bats soaring through the sky in search of their insect prey. Located in the Guadalupe Mountain, Carlsbad Caverns is home to 17 different bat species. The most famed among them is the Brazilian free-tail bat weighing in at ½ ounce, with a wingspan of 11 inches. The sheer enormity of this colony never ceases to amaze visitors.

The planned one-evening revival of a lantern tour into the Big Room of Carlsbad Caverns National Park proved so popular that officials added another date. The initial Dec. 27 date for the Rock of Ages program sold out, Paula Bauer, the park's management assistant, said Wednesday. The program was limited to 60 people.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park dedicated its newly renovated visitors center on the 85th anniversary of the establishment of the park as a national monument. The event, held Oct. 25, included the opening of a new exhibit called Underground Visions: Carlsbad Caverns Through the Artist's Eye, featuring four original prints of the cave by famed photographer Ansel Adams.

CARLSBAD — Although the new visitors' center at Carlsbad Caverns National Park is functional and open to the public, there are still many items on the contractor's to do list, a park official said. The visitors' center has undergone a $9 million renovation that started in May of 2007, and is now nearing completion.

After a couple of days of using generators at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, power was restored late Friday night, according to John C. Benjamin, park superintendent. Wind gusts to 50 mph Thursday was blamed for the initial outage. "Everything is back to normal out there," Benjamin said Saturday. He said Xcel crews were able to restore power to the park earlier than anticipated, with power restored at about 10:30 p.m. Friday.