What Mother Nature created millions of years ago will soon be new and improved.
Dennis Boyer, owner of the cavern, is spending the winter months blasting a new tourist walkway. It will reveal a new part of the cave that very few tourists have ever seen. Boyer can barely hold in his excitement.
‘’For years visitors have been coming and we'd come to the end where we'd have to turn around and say there is more cave up around that passage way... and there is. We've got nearly four miles of explored passage way.’’
The new part of the cave was accessible in the past only to serious cavers… the kind of folks willing to crawl on their bellies for an hour in cold water just to get there.
Boyer says this new walkway is literally groundbreaking work.
‘’What we're doing now is making this tunnel so people can access the rest of the cave. This tunnel we're doing here will be one hundred feet long, about 12 feet wide, and about seven feet high.’’
Three-hundred ton of rock will be drilled, blasted, and hauled out of the cave to create a new walkway for tourists.
Moonshiners once used this cave back in the day, taking advantage of the clean water and privacy.
These days it’s privately owner, family-friendly, and alcohol free. You’ll see a vast array of beautiful formations, fossils, and waterfalls.
‘’By this spring people won’t be stopping where they did before. They will be able to go down this tunnel and start seeing the first lake and what lies beyond.’’
Being closed this time of years is essential to the project, Boyer said. They need to do the blasting while the bats in the cave… are sleeping the winter away.