Blanchard Springs Caverns

This shorter, easier trail takes you almost half a mile one-way through the caverns. All stairs can be avoided, making trails accessible for wheelchairs and strollers. The trail travels through two huge rooms filled with an incredible variety and number of crystalline formations – sparkling flowstone, towering columns, delicate soda straws. 

Reservations are required and can be made at recreation.gov.

This longer, more strenuous tour is 1.2 miles long, with nearly 700 stairsteps and explores the middle level of the Caverns system. This trail follows the path of the first explorers through water-carved passageways, under the natural entrance, along the cave stream, and through enormous, beautifully decorated rooms. 

The Discovery Trail is only offered at certain times of the year. 

Reservations are required and can be made at recreation.gov.

This tour offers you an introduction to off trail caving in a structured environment. The newest of the Caverns tours takes visitors to the undeveloped sections of the middle level. Participants should be in good physical shape, wear sturdy boots, and come prepared to get dirty and have fun.

Tour participants should expect to climb very steep slopes, crawl on hands and knees, pass under low ceilings, and travel through red clay. The tour ends at the Titans, a group of tall spectacular columns. Hard hats, kneepads, coveralls, gloves, and lights are provided. Participants must wear sturdy boots with ankle support and aggressive tread, bring street shoes for after the tour, and any medications needed. The Wild Cave Tour is limited to a minimum of 3 but no more than 12 people per tour. Participants must be at least 10 years old. A responsible adult must accompany children 10 to 12 years old. The Wild Cave Tour is available by reservation only.

Blanchard Springs Caverns has a constant year-round temperature of 58°F and nearly 100% relative humidity. You may want to bring a lightweight jacket. The paved trails tend to be wet, so you should wear low-heeled, nonslip shoes.

Calcite is dissolved from the limestone when surface water, containing carbonic acid absorbed from the air and soil, percolates down through the rock and into the cave. When this acid water - carrying a calcium bicarbonate solution - encounters the air inside the cave, the carbon dioxide is released. The water then deposits the calcite. Layer upon layer of calcite deposit will eventually shape the speleothem.

Many factors determine the shape that speleothems will take. How the acid water enters the cave - by dripping, flowing, seeping, splashing - and how it flows or stands after entering, are just two of these factors.

Sometimes the calcite speleothems have pastel and earth colors, indicating that other minerals were deposited, continuously or at intervals. Iron oxides account for the shades of brown, yellow, and red, while manganese gives shades of blue, black, and gray.

• Soda straws (first stage stalactites) grow from the ceiling as water runs down inside them and deposits rings of calcite at their tips.
• When the soda straws are plugged, water trickling down their outside turns them into larger carrot - or icicle - shaped stalactites .
• Stalagmites , which rise from the floor when dripping water deposits minerals, are usually larger in diameter than stalactites and more rounded on top.
• A stalactite and stalagmite may meet midway, forming a column . Or, one or the other may grow all the way to the floor or ceiling to form a column.
• On an inclined ceiling, water may deposit calcite in thin, translucent sheets, producing draperies that hang in delicate folds.
• At times, water forming the draperies contains minerals in addition to calcite, resulting in dark orange or brown bands called bacon formation .
• A flowstone forms when considerable water flows down walls, over floors and older formations, building up sheets of calcite like icing on a cake.
• Along streams, rimstone dams and terraces often build up and trap the water in pools - the home of tiny blind, white creatures that dwell in caves.

The Coral Pond is a highlight of the Dripstone Trail. This material is not really "coral" at all, but calcite. These lacy patterns are formed on top of calm waters at the point of air contact. As the water levels slowly rise and fall, different calcite levels are deposited.

The entrance zone is most like the surrounding surface area. Some shade-loving green plants grow in the twilight zone but extend only to the deepest point where light penetrates. Temperature in the variable temperature zone fluctuates with the weather outside the cave. Deeper into the cave, in the constant temperature zone , the temperature stays at 58 degrees regardless of weather on the surface.

Biologists recognize three kinds of cave animals. Those that live above ground but often retreat to caves - bats and crickets - are trogloxenes , "cave guests." One trogloxene in Blanchard Springs Caverns is the Indiana bat, an endangered species. Animals living mostly in the cave but with the ability to survive outside it - some salamanders, frogs, and harvest men (daddy longlegs) - are troglophiles , "cave lovers." Animals which spend their entire lives in the cave's total darkness and uniform environment are troglobite , "cave dwellers." Like the white Ozark blind salamander, many are sightless and without pigment. This four-inch-long salamander, native to Blanchard Springs Caverns, was the first cave dwelling amphibian found in America.

After the mosses and ferns of the entrance zone, little plant life - except for bacteria, mold, and fungi - occurs farther back in the cave. The reason is obvious. Some animals can return to the surface for the food and energy they need to exist, but plants growing in the cave must be able to find a source of energy already "packaged" - in the form of decaying wood, leaves, and other organic matter.

Bacteria in the debris washed into the caverns by floods and run-off sustain some form of life. Microscopic organisms are food for slightly larger aquatic cave animals - flatworms, isopods, and amphipods, few of them even an inch long. They are devoured by still larger animals, such as salamanders and crayfish, major performers in the cave food web.

Even with the washed-in debris, many cave animals could not survive without the trogloxenes that regularly return to the surface for food. Bat droppings, or guano, supplement bacteria, mold, and fungi as food sources for the smaller non-aquatic cave animals - millipedes, snails, beetles, and other insects - which, in turn, are eaten by salamanders, spiders, and crickets.

Millions more years passed, and the widening river eroded to a new level, deeper and deeper into the limestone. The surface of the land began to show signs of sinkholes, where rain water drained directly into the limestone below. The cavities formed beneath the surface in the saturated limestone joined into one continuous channel as the underground river moved sideways between the layers of rock. The water continued to seep and move through the rock, dissolving and enlarging the soon-to-be caverns.

Still thousands, maybe even millions, of years later, the eroding river dropped to a new, lower level. The water drained from the underground river, leaving the cave high and dry. While another system of caves was forming at a new water level below, dripping water entering the dry rooms and passages started depositing calcium carbonate and other minerals in the form of stalactites, stalagmites, and numerous other dripstone features. The speleothems grow as long as groundwater enters the cave.

Pets are not allowed in the Visitor Center or Caverns: seeing-eye dogs and service dogs are an exception. There are no kennels. Pet are welcome in the recreation areas, outside the swimming areas, as long as they are leashed.

Blanchard Springs Caverns is located 15 miles northwest of Mountain View off Arkansas 14.  Note: If you are using a GPS unit for directions to Blanchard Springs Caverns, please remove dirt roads from the GPS settings for your benefit.

Other recreation opportunities include:

• Barkshed Campground
• Blanchard Springs Recreation Area
• Gunner Pool Campground
• Mirror Lake
• Ozark Folk Center State Park
• Sylamore Scenic Byway