Carlsbad Caverns National Park guide · 1 min read
From 1923 Monument to World Heritage Site
People around Carlsbad knew about the caves in the local limestone well before the federal government took notice.
Protection came on October 25, 1923, when President Calvin Coolidge signed a proclamation creating Carlsbad Cave National Monument. The proclamation praised the cavern for its enormous proportions and the remarkable variety of its natural decoration. Much of the credit for that step goes to Jim White, a cowboy from the Carlsbad area who championed the cave and worked to bring it into the national park system.
Congress raised the monument to national park status on May 14, 1930, creating Carlsbad Caverns National Park. In 1995, UNESCO inscribed the park on its World Heritage list as a natural site. The park lies in Eddy County, New Mexico, close to the city of Carlsbad.
Most visitors come for the Big Room. There was a time when no natural chamber underground was thought to be bigger. Other rooms have since surpassed it, yet it still ranks among the largest cave rooms on the planet, and the sheer range and abundance of its decorations set it apart. Throughout the caves, calcite shapes such as columns and groups of stalactites rise from the floor and hang from the ceilings.
These caves took shape as sulfuric acid ate away at the limestone, leaving openings of every size. The park holds more than 119 known caves. Overhead stretches the Chihuahuan Desert, a surface world of deep canyons, towering ledges left by an ancient sea, cactus in bloom, and the animals that make their home there.
