Lewis & Clark Caverns - Whitehall, MT
N 45° 50.290 W 111° 52.030
12T E 432657 N 5076432
Montana's first and best-known state park showcases one of the most highly decorated limestone caverns in the Northwest United States.
Waymark Code: WM7BRX
Location: Montana, United States
Date Posted: 10/02/2009
Views: 9
At Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park, whether you’re underground or above it, the world around you is shaped by water.
Water sculpted the famous caves, drop by patient drop, hauling microscopic bits of stone from one place to another. And it was water, appearing as steam from the ground one cold day, that originally brought white men here.
Tom Williams and Bert Pannell first peered into the caverns on a winter day in 1892. They’d been hunting and saw what looked like a column of smoke rising from a hillside. They labored up the mountain to investigate and learned that it wasn’t smoke at all: It was steam, the steady exhalation of living, breathing caves. The warm air was pushed from the mountain’s lungs only to become ice in the cold air, transformed into crystals so tiny they floated skyward and evaporated in the sun.
American Indians had seen this “smoke,” this breath from a mountain, or at least that’s the way the story goes in the farms and towns around the caverns. But nobody knows for certain. If the Blackfeet or Shoshone or anybody else had explored these caverns, they left behind no sign.
President Theodore Roosevelt, one of the nation’s great conservationists and the kind of guy who likely would have enjoyed spelunking the caverns, selected a name for the newly obtained property: Lewis and Clark Caverns. The famous explorers had never actually visited the site, but they had hiked near the caverns on Cave Mountain in 1805 looking for Shoshone Indians, and a portion of their famous route was visible from the caverns’ entrance.
The government designated the newly named caverns the nation’s 12th national monument.
Guided cavern tours last about two hours (bring rubber-soled shoes, prepare to stoop, and carry a sweater to insulate yourself from the constant 50 degree temperature), but the rest of the 3,034-acre park is yours to explore at leisure.
Type of Land: State Park
Managed By: Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks
Contact Info: (406) 287-3541
Website: [Web Link]
Type of Cave: Karst Cave
Contains Stalactites: yes
Contains Stalagmites: yes
Price of Admission: 10.00 (listed in local currency)
Contains Bats: Not Listed
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Visit Instructions:
Please include a digital photograph of the cave which documents your visit and any information that may be helpful for future visitors.