November 5, 1999
Web posted at: 2:41 p.m. EST (1941 GMT)

BENSON, Arizona (CNN) -- Spelunkers, mark your calendars. Kartchner Caverns State Park, at the base of the Whetstone Mountains in Cochise County, Arizona, is scheduled to have its grand opening November 12. The park, which covers 550 acres, has a cave that has been listed by cave experts as one of the Top 10 in the world for its mineral deposits, according to the Arizona State Parks Department.

Two cave explorers are credited with discovering the caverns 25 years ago. As the story goes, Randy Tufts and Gary Tenen found a sinkhole. They felt warm, most air coming from below and crawled down through muddy tunnels to discover a series of caverns. They kept the caverns a secret for 14 years, until a deal was worked out with the parks department to purchase the cave and surrounding area.

Development, the department says, took 11 painstaking years -- painstaking, because workers had to preserve the environmental conditions that allow calcite (calcium carbonate) deposits to form.

That meant fitting the tunnels with airtight refrigerator doors and chambers; constantly misting the cave with water to keep the humidity at 99 percent; and keeping the temperature at a constant 68 degrees Fahrenheit -- even when the desert air above hit 100. Trails, which are wheelchair-accessible, had to be built by hand, with no heavy equipment. Cement had to be lowered through airlocks in hand-carried buckets.

The half-mile (0.8 kilometer) cave tour begins with an electric tram ride to the entrance. From there, state park rangers lead visitors to two main galleries, called the Rotunda and Throne Room. They're said to be the size of football fields, with 100-foot (30-meter) ceilings. Multicolored stalactites hang from above and stalagmites rise from the floor.

Visitors aren't allowed to touch the mineral deposits in the cave because oils on the hands may impede their formation. But fiberglass stalagmites are available for touching in the park's discovery center, as an enhancement to a visit by visually impaired parkgoers. There are crawl-through holes for children to give them an idea of how small the original entrance was when explorers found the caverns.

At the tour's conclusion, the park service pipes music into the Throne Room cavern, using special lighting to showcase various formations.

Elsewhere, Kartchner Caverns State Park has five miles (eight kilometers) of hiking, a handicapped accessible loop trail and the 23,000-square-foot (7,010-square-meter) discovery center. There, tourists can learn about the history of the cave, its geology and the creatures that live inside. Most notable are some 1,000 female Myotis velifer bats that return to roost from May to September.

Kartchner Caverns State Park is scheduled to be open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day of the year except Christmas. The entrance fee to the park is $10 per vehicle of four, $1 per extra person. This includes the extensive exhibit complex, picnic areas, hiking trails and nature areas including the hummingbird garden.

Cave tours are to start every 15 or 20 minutes -- and take about one hour -- from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily. A tour costs $14 for adults, $6 children ages 7 to 14. Children 6 and younger are to be admitted free (this includes the $2 per-reservation fee.)

Reservations for cave tours are strongly recommended. The park reports that some 21,000 tours already have been reserved into 2000. The telephone number for reservations is (520) 586-CAVE. No tours are to be given after noon on December 24 or on December 25.

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