A national park with the word “cave” incorporated into its name might make you think the park is all about the cave. For the most part, you would be correct. Wind Cave at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota is the central focus of this place. It’s the third-longest cave in the United States, with a current length of 167 miles. Wind Cave also has the distinction of having been established by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 as the first national park to specifically protect a cave. But there is so much more to this park than just the cave.

Topside, you’ll have the opportunity for a little wildlife viewing, from pronghorn to prairie dogs to bison to black-footed ferrets. You can also stretch your legs hiking over rolling prairies and within the forested Black Hills. Of the park’s geology, the National Park Service states:

… The origin of the Black Hills is closely tied with the mountain building events that rose the Rocky Mountains. For many millions of years before uplift, the area which the Hills occupy has fluctuated between ocean, coastline, and inland environments. Many layers of rocks were deposited over this time. One rock layer in particular, the Paha Sapa Limestone, is representative of a marine environment and is host to most of the caves in the Black Hills. This includes Wind Cave, Jewel Cave, and others.

Wind Cave is a “breathing” (aka barometric) cave. Air moves in or out of the cave, equalizing the atmospheric pressures of cave and outside air. According to Wikipedia:

When the air pressure is higher outside the cave than inside it, air flows into the cave, raising the cave's pressure to match the outside pressure. When the air pressure inside the cave is higher than outside it, air flows out of the cave, lowering the air pressure within the cave. A large cave such as Wind Cave with only a few small openings will "breathe" more obviously than a small cave with many large openings.

Rapid weather changes, accompanied by rapid barometric changes, are a feature of western South Dakota weather. If a fast-moving storm was approaching on the day the Bingham brothers found the cave, the atmospheric pressure would have been dropping fast, causing the cave's higher-pressure air to rush out all available openings, creating the wind for which Wind Cave was named.

Human history, from ranchers to tour guides to the Civilian Conservation Corps, played a role in Wind Cave’s discovery and subsequent preservation. Long before 1881, when brothers Jesse and Todd Bingham discovered a small hole in the ground by following the loud whistling noise to its source, this windy hole and the landscape surrounding it was traveled upon by Sioux tribes as well as Apache and Arapaho peoples. Wind Cave, as it is known now, was a revered place. The Lakota call the cave “Oniya Oshoka", where the earth "breathes inside," and relate an elaborate Emergence Story about how the original peoples traveled through Wind Cave’s passages out through the opening to the new world above ground, with bison to provide for all their needs, from clothing to tools to food.

Wind Cave is more than just a hole in the ground. Take a ranger-led tour and you’ll be amazed at the myriad speleothems (cave formations) bearing descriptive names such as boxwork, frostwork, drapery, flowstone, helictite bushes, and popcorn. It’s an ecosystem in which thrives a diverse community of microorganisms (extremophiles) not requiring photosynthesis for survival. Scientists studying the cave’s crystal-clear waters have identified about 350 different bacteria species, some of which are entirely new.

Exploration of Wind Cave continues to the present, with intrepid cavers descending into the inky depths for days at a time, mapping the cave’s length and discovering more wonders.

Regardless whether this is your first or fourth trip visiting Wind Cave National Park, the pages below provide information to help you plan your trip and might even teach you something new.

Traveler’s Choice For: cave formations, wildlife, photography