Wonder Cave

Wonder Cave belongs to the Purgatory Creek system on the Balcones Escarpment, its entrance a mile southwest of the Hays County courthouse. It is reported to be the only commercially operated dry-formed cave in the United States: the fissure was opened not by erosion but by the earthquake that produced the Balcones Fault, and the fault line itself can be seen in the cave's ceiling. For a while the cave concealed its discoverer's illicit distilling and gambling enterprises. It is now part of an amusement park offering tours of its chambers and a wildlife park.

What the plaque says

Wonder Cave In Balcones Fault, created by prehistoric earth shift. Said to have been campsite of Indians and Spaniards, especially priests who planted anaqua trees in area. By legend, robber gangs in 1820s cached Camino Real booty here. Discovered 1893 for Anglo-Texas by Mark A. and Elizabeth Burleson Bevers, after water well drill fell 158 feet at their home here. This became first commercially opened cave in state about 1900 when W. S. Davis gave guided tours by candlelight; bought in 1916 for $50 and a gray horse by A. B. Rogers, who spent his lifetime in discovery and development. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 2.0 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Gruene Historic District — 13 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 16 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 17 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.

More markers nearby

• Peter Cavanaugh Woods — 0.7 mi
• Site of Coronal Institute — 0.7 mi
• San Marcos Cemetery — 0.8 mi
• Eddie Durham — 0.9 mi