Absalom Lehman, rancher on the Snake Range in Nevada, was enjoying a sandwich one warm afternoon when a pack rat made off with it. The sandwich was too good to let the varmint make off with it, so Absalom hopped on his horse and started after the delicious morsel. The rat eventually ran down a hole unknown to the rancher. He tumbled down and dangled by the ropes on his horse for three days before being rescued. This is a paraphrase of a newspaper story recounting how Lehman discovered a series of limestone caves about 6,000 feet up the side of Wheeler Peak.
My cave guide park ranger shared this story as we began my first tour into these magnificent caverns. In reality Lehman Caves were probably first discovered by someone feeling air coming out of the ground. It was known to the local Native people, but they didn’t frequent the cave or go beyond the first chamber or so.
Lehman began selling candles to curious visitors with a promise he would come find them after 24 hours of being in the cave. He also has a policy of “if you can break it, you can take it.” This led to hundreds if not thousands of formations being destroyed and taken, but also allowing other rooms to be discovered and creating a path non-spelunkers can take into the caves.
Over time the cave was used as a speak-easy/dance hall, an Elk’s lodge, a scout campground and Hollywood set. Declared a National Monument in 1922, the Forest Service first administered the site and created entrance and exit tunnels. In the 30’s the Civilian Conservation Corps also did work in the cave creating easier access to additional spectacular rooms so that crawling through small openings isn’t required.
I took both the 1-hour and 90-minute tours seeing all of the main chambers and spectacular formations. If you’re not with small children (kids under five are only allowed on the shorter tour), I definitely recommend the longer tour because the Grand Palace is the most amazing, and it is at the end of the 90-minute tour.
One of the special features of these caves are formations called shields. There are only 80 caves in the country with these fantastical stone creations. Of course the caves have all your other standard formations of stalactites and stalagmites and flow stone.
Taking multiple tours is also a great way to get more information since the tour guides share different information. On my second tour, the ranger talked a lot about conservation practices and how they have changed since the cave was first discovered going from breaking formations for souvenirs and tagging the ceiling with candle soot to not touching the walls and decontaminating for white nose syndrome.
The ranger regularly said that was 100 years ago and they thought differently back then and didn’t know any better, but we do now. At one point he used a UV flashlight to show us the true colors of the cave and how the cave wall glowed after being exposed briefly to the light. After showing this really cool trick, I jokingly cut in saying that in 100 years they’ll realize that the UV light damaged the cave. The whole group gave a hardy laugh.
For being a smaller cave system with rooms not quite as grand as Carlsbad, Lehman Caves are extremely ornate even after being pilfered for decades of their treasures. I highly recommend a visit to this isolated place.
