Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park

Hunters found the cave and a quarryman fought the railroad over it, but what visitors walk through now is largely the Civilian Conservation Corps' work. In 1935 the New Deal jobs program set up Company 574 at Camp Cavern near Whitehall, and over six years more than two hundred men, with a geologist, an architect and engineers, rebuilt the inside of the mountain. They replaced Dan Morrison's wooden stairs with steps cut into the rock, opened passages and new rooms, strung electric lights, mapped the system, and blasted a 538-foot tunnel so tours could leave by a different way than they came in.

Outside they built the road up from the canyon and, in 1938, the headquarters building, designed by the Park Service architect O. John Ballas in the rustic style the agency favored in its own parks. The state already held the caverns by then, though the Legislature did not create a state park system until 1940. When the caverns formally opened on May 4, 1941, about three thousand people came.

The tour still follows the crews' route. It begins with an uphill walk of about three-quarters of a mile to the entrance building, then descends more than six hundred steps through narrow, low passages and past steep drops before the long tunnel brings you out into daylight. Tours are guided only.