"WIND CAVE NATIONAL PARK, Boxwork Formation"
CREDIT: National Parks Service
Wind Cave National Park reopens for tours this weekend after closing last year. There will be some new restrictions in the cave to assure public safety.
The cave shut down late last June when the elevator system that takes tourists into the cave malfunctioned. The mechanical problems along with the pandemic forced Wind Cave to remain closed longer than planned.
Tom Farrell is the Chief of Interpretation at Wind Cave National Park. He says one of the goals in reopening is to keep people safe.
“So, what we’re doing is that we’re limiting the number of people on tours by 50%, which will allow social distancing once you’re in the cave, and then just putting in safety measures both on the surface and in the cave to provide for the safety of the visitors and for the staff”
Farrell says the limits on tour sizes means tickets will sell out quickly.
“Come early to get a ticket. A lot of the time what we encourage people to do is stop by in the morning, grab a ticket, go out and explore the southern Black Hills and then come back later in the day and take the tour”
Wind Cave is world famous for a calcite cave formation called boxwork. Farrell says that combined with the history and culture of the national park make for an exciting time in the Black Hills.
“It’s a fantastic place. The human history story there is fantastic. Caves are like people, they’re all a little bit, all a little different and everybody has a story to tell”
Wind Cave was the seventh national park established and the first cave to be designated a national park anywhere in the world.