Colossal Cave Mountain Park

Colossal Cave is a dry cave, its formations no longer growing, which lends its chambers a still, dusty permanence. Long known to the O'odham and later to outlaws said to have hidden loot inside, the cave became a tourist attraction in the 1920s. In the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps gave it the stonework it wears today, the trails, walls, and buildings laid up by hand in local rock. The result, in the foothills near Vail, is one of the largest dry caverns in the country and a monument to Depression-era labor.

What the plaque says

This property has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior. Colossal Cave Mountain Park, 1934.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Saguaro National Park — 7.4 mi
  The giant cactus, and the O'odham who count it as kin
• Mission San Xavier del Bac — 22 mi
  The White Dove of the Desert — the finest Spanish Baroque church in the country
• Tucson — 23 mi
  The Old Pueblo — four thousand years of farming under the sky islands

More markers nearby

• Desert Homes — 8.8 mi
• Agua Caliente Ranch and Hot Springs — 16 mi
• Airmen Memorial Bridge — 17 mi
• Fort Lowell — 20 mi