May 28, 1936
A youngful cowboy halted his mustang and stared. In the distance he saw, rising from the ground, what seemed to be a column of smoke.
He spurred his mustang forward and saw, to his astonishment, that what he had thought was smoke, was an immense flock of bats – millions of them! The bats were emerging from a hole in the ground.
Thus did James Larkin White, 18-year-old cowhand, discover in 1901 the world’s greatest and most spectacular underground wonder, the Carlsbad Caverns of New Mexico.
A few days later White and a young Mexican friend began to explore the caverns. They did not go far. In 1905 and 1906 they resumed explorations, entering for several miles. The smudges with which they marked the walls are still visible. White is still living and has profited little from his discovery. He runs a tourist camp near the caverns.
Today, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, consisting of 10,000 acres of rugged hills in the Guadalupe Mountains, is one of America’s most popular scenic attractions. Only 25 miles from Carlsbad, N.M., and 157 miles from El Paso, it is an important asset to these and other nearby cities.
The Caverns consist of a series of loft and spacious underground chambers and connecting corridors, with alcoves extending off to the sides that are of great beauty. Most impressive is the famous Big Room, nearly 4000 feet long, 625 feet wide, and at one place 300 feet high.
Writers have exhausted their adjectives trying to describe the strange beauty of Carlsbad Caverns. They go into verbal ecstatics over its cathedral-like doors, its frozen encases of milk-white flowstone, its glittering stalactites suspended like chandeliers hundreds of feet above the floor, the giant stalagmites which have been 50,000,000 years in the making. Here Mother Nature fairly outdoes herself.
Supt. Thomas Boles reveals that 116,457 persons visited the caverns in 1935, and that 150,000 will visit them this year. They come from every state in the union and from many foreign countries.
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