The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [290]
II
Inspired by the saving of Crater Lake, President Roosevelt looked for another natural “wonder” to designate as a national park. The whole notion of “scenic nationalism” was in vogue.26 During the 1880s, while living in the Badlands, Roosevelt had perhaps heard about a site in the Black Hills: a “hole that breaths cool air,” considered sacred by the Lakota people.27 It was known as Wind Cave, and the Lakota believed that a beautiful woman—the “buffalo woman”—had once floated out of it to give her people bison. Other tribes believed that a demon or dragon lived in its depths. Some Native Americans believed that the cave had magical powers, that it could predict weather. They weren’t completely delusional: the cave opening did serve as a sort of primitive barometer. When the weather was good, air would blow into the cave. However, when a storm approached the low air pressure caused higher pressure to swell inside the underground cavern, causing air to be forced out in a loud, dramatic fashion.28
Even though Wind Cave is one of the longest underground mazes in the world (encompassing more than 130 miles of passages), when Jesse and Tom Bingham stumbled upon it while deer hunting in 1881 there was only one entrance: a twelve- by ten-inch “blowhole.”29 As legend has it, the air pouring out of the hole blew the Binghams’ cowboy hats off their heads, like a gust off Lake Michigan. Hoping that they had discovered a gold mine, the Binghams returned to Wind Cave the following day with curious friends, only to have their hats now sucked into the maw of the cave; the wind had shifted 180 degrees in less than twenty-four hours. The Binghams were afraid to explore the cave. Perhaps they would be attacked by bats or snakes. But Charlie Crary wasn’t hesitant. Boldly he climbed into the blowhole, as if he were Professor Lidenbrock in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. He unraveled a reel of twine so that he could find his way out, and he emerged from Wind Cave unscathed and almost stuttering with excitement. His mind was dazzled by the elaborate, delicate, honeycomb-patterned boxwork he had encountered, fragile crystals deposited around like glitter. In his historical study The National Park, Freeman Tilden matter-of-factly describes the cavernous rooms as “lacy compartments.”30
Crary had seen one of the most amazing boxwork formations in the world. More than 300 million years old, Wind Cave is a subterranean wonderland of fractured limestone, crystal fins, and calcium deposits. Words cannot do justice to the diverse geological formations and underground lakes. A whole new geological vocabulary, in fact, was created to describe various types of boxwork: for example, starburst, nail quartz, gypsum flowers, and helictite bushes. With a constant temperature of fifty-three degrees Fahrenheit, the cave network was a perfect retreat from the Black Hills’ cold winters and hot summers. Some of the passageways are wet and slippery. An astounding 95 percent of the world’s mineral boxwork was found in the cave. Yet much of it was fragile, snapping off when a spelunker’s head bumped it or a hand grasped it.
Between 1881 and 1890 South Dakotans hoped that gold could be grubsaked in Wind Cave, as it had been in the Black Hills. Miners tried, but with no luck. Instead, the cave complex started attracting explorers and curiosity seekers. Periodically the local Custer Chronicle called Wind Cave a “wonder,” and the Hot Spring Star added the mystical note that “no bottom” had been found. It was frustrating for locals to sit on a great mineralogical assemblage and not be able to turn a profit. Alvin McDonald of the South Dakota Mining Company considered