Oregon Caves Cave Junction Oregon
Oregon Caves National Monument is the perfect visit as part of exploring Southern Oregon; you can easily spend a day in the caves before heading off to other wonders in the region, like Crater Lake, the Groves of Redwoods National Park near Cresent City, California, or the Southern Oregon Coast.
Whether you love caves like me or not, Oregon Caves is an awe-inspiring experience of natural beauty carved over millions of years.
Oregon Caves National Monuments is a hidden gem like many national park units. Planning and ensuring you arrive on time is crucial to making the most of your visit, especially if you're on a tight schedule and want to secure an early cave tour.
The journey to Oregon Caves National Monument is an adventure, starting from Cave Junction, known as the “Gateway to the Oregon Caves.” You'll need to turn onto OR-46, also known as the “Caves Highway,” and follow it for about 20 miles until it ends at the parking area for Oregon Caves. The drive, which takes about 50 minutes, is scenic, with the road winding through the picturesque Siskiyou Mountains, setting the stage for the natural wonders that await you at the caves.
For the best experience, the National Park Service (NPS) recommends arriving about 30 minutes before your scheduled tour. If you’re aiming for a 10 am tour, leaving Cave Junction no later than 8:30 am will ensure you're not rushing and can fully enjoy the tour. A special note: the tours sell out during peak season, and I recommend stopping at the Illinois Visitor Center to purchase your tickets before driving up to the caves. This will save you time if the tours are sold out. The Illinois Visitor Center is on the right side of the road as you turn onto Cave Highway. I arrived here at 0800, and there were already four cars in the parking lot to get tickets. They open at 0830, so get here early. They have extra tickets here, so if the tickets are sold out online on the day you plan to come here, this is where you want to go. They have about 100 daily tickets for purchase here. If you wish to purchase tickets online, you can follow this link:
Entrance to the park is free, but there is a fee for a cave tour. Cave access is by tour only.
Once you make the drive and arrive at the parking lot, you must hike a little up the road to the Visitor's Center. The Oregon Caves Visitor Center is home to a small museum, bookshop, and gift shop. It provides an excellent introduction to this area, what you’ll experience on a cave tour and the surrounding hiking trails. The Center also has a 3D model of the current cave system. You can look at this; it will show you the various caves and the path you will take for the Discovery Cave Tour. Note: Other tours are available here, but most people take the Discovery Tour. The other tours include a Candlelight Tour, which shows how the caves must have appeared to the first explorers. and an Off Trail Cave Tour. The Off Trail Cave Tour is where you can crawl around on your belly and squeeze through some tight places. This is where you can explore the deepest parts of the cave, and if you have claustrophobia, this is not the tour to take. You will also be introduced to caving techniques, etiquette, and conservation.
The Visitor Center also has restrooms nearest the cave entrance and lockers to store all bags and non-clothing items (water bottles, large cameras, backpacks, purses, hiking sticks, etc.) you brought. None of those are allowed in the caves so that you can lock them up for a quarter (25¢). Please follow these regulations. The biggest one is that North America’s bats are attacked by White-nose Syndrome, a deadly bat disease. Please do not bring clothes (even washed clothes), shoes, or equipment used in any other cave, mine, or other bat habitat to prevent the spread.
Before you get to the Visitors Center, you will see the Oregon Caves Chateau. The Chateau is closed until further notice for repair and rehabilitation construction. Because Ausland Group didn't have the funding available to complete the extensive work immediately, the original construction contract with Ausland Group was terminated on March 23, 2023.
The Chateau at Oregon Caves is one of the National Park's “Great Lodges” and a National Historic Landmark. When open again, this six-story lodge will offer 23 overnight rooms, a fine dining room with views over a wooded canyon, and a coffee shop from the 1930s. Each room has its unique charm.
To start your tour, you must be at the Visitors Center about 15 minutes before the tour begins. This is where you will meet the tour guide and review instructions before entering the caves. Please Note: The Discovery Cave Tour is one-way through the caves and takes about 90 minutes. You need to be fit enough to climb over 500 steps and able to squat below 45 inches at points. If you feel claustrophobic, there is an exit tunnel about a quarter of the way through the tour. This cave tour is not like other caves because the floor is flat. Usually, cave floors are rocky, and I think the NPS does this to make it safer for everyone. The floor does get very wet and can be slippery in spots. Children must be at least 42" tall to take a tour for safety. Infant carry packs and strollers are not permitted. Childcare is not available.
Pets may go anywhere a car can: roads and road shoulders, the campground, picnic areas, and parking lots. However, pets are not permitted in the cave, on any hiking trail, on any body of water, or inside the visitor center or other park facilities. Pets may be left unattended in vehicles. However, please be aware that if pets display signs of distress due to conditions such as hot weather, owners may be cited for endangering an animal.
Before the tour, you will be asked to volunteer to follow the group. This helps the guide know everyone is still with the party. A fun note: If you have kids or you and your kid volunteer to be at the end of the line in the cave tour, you can earn a special “Trail Ranger” badge!
The entrance to the Cave
Once you first enter the cave, you will hear running water, which the NPS calls the River Styx. In Greek mythology, the River Styx is the Goddess of the river of the underworld. The majority of the half-mile walk is through regular tunnels. You have now entered what is called Watson's Grotto. Once you have walked into Oregon Caves National Monument, you will immediately realize that the cave is pretty wet. Water is dripping on you throughout the cave walk, so I recommend a hat at a minimum. This will also give you some protection if you do hit your head.
Getting to some beautiful and exciting cave formations doesn’t take long into the cave tour. After leaving Watson’s Grotto, you almost immediately reach Petrified Gardens, where many flowstones are along the walls.
The next room on the tour was called the Dry Room. Oregon Caves is one of the few marble caves in the world (only about 5% of all caves are marble caves) created when acidic rainwater dissolves the surrounding marble. Oregon Caves has long been known as the “Marble Halls of Oregon.” As you walk through the caves, you can see the marble in the cave walls, and it's most noticeable in the Dry Room.
The next room was the Imagination Room. Here, various formations appear to be something if you use your imagination. These include a heart, a face, and a snake, to name a few.
On to the Banana Grove. In this chamber, various formations look like bunches of bananas.
One of the many highlights of Oregon Caves is the flowstone formation named Niagara Falls. As might be guessed, the cave formation gets its name because the flowstone resembles Niagara Falls. While the formation is beautiful, it also is a testament to what happens when caves aren’t protected. As you look at the bottom of Niagara Falls, you can see that many of the tips of the formation have been broken off and taken as souvenirs. When you learn that it takes 100 years for one of these to grow, the length of the tip of your pinky finger, you realize that the damage erased tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of works. It puts into perspective the critical work the National Park system does to keep these beautiful places intact for later generations.
The next stop on the Oregon Caves tour is at the Spiral Stairs. Spiral stairs are a spot in Oregon Caves where water once leaked in through an opening from above ground. Above the spiral stairs is what remains of the opening (not closed), where the dripping water creates flow stones with bacon strips around the edges of the shaft. When looking down, the shaft doesn’t end but continues to a level below. That shaft now holds a spiral staircase to get to a lower level of the cave, which you must descend to see other parts of Oregon Caves. The cave formation named the Grand Column is at the bottom of the Spiral Stairs. Columns are formed when stalactites (formed from the cave ceiling) and stalagmites (formed from the cave floor) connect.
Further on, you come to the Wind Tunnel. If you stay quiet and still, you can hear the wind coming at you in this tunnel.
Miller's Chapel. Joaquin Miller’s Chapel is a formation named after the famous poet "Poet of the Sierras.” After he visited the area in 1907, Miller lobbied for protection of the caves, which he called the “Marble Halls of Oregon.”
Onward to Paradise Lost, named after John Milton’s epic poem, is above the Ghost Room. There are 45 steps to ascend a large dome pit to a small landing surrounded by drapery and flowstone. A sheer sediment wall and iron oxides are visible from the platform below Paradise Lost. Amidst the classic cave calcite, this room also features some unusual cave formations. A steep wall of yellow-tan sediment towers overhead at the platform before the stairs. The wall is made up of silt-sized grains known as loess. Loess is a fine sediment glacially ground down, windblown, and re-deposited by water in the cave. Loess is expected in Iowa hillsides but somewhat unusual in a cave in Oregon.
The Ghost Room. This room appears white and ghostly because of the pure white layers of calcium carbonate. This is also the last room before you exit the cave.
The ranger also described the cave's features and other exciting things during the tour. There were ancient grizzly bear bones over 50,000 years old, a spectacular waterfall-like formation that glows for a few seconds after illumination is turned off, a volcanic dike, and green algae growing due to the artificial lights.
Once you exit the cave, you must hike back down to the Visitors Center. The hike is paved, pretty easy, and downhill the entire way.
Flashlights and tripods are prohibited in any part of the caverns, though flash photography is permitted. Most of the cave is dimly lit, so obtaining good, handheld photos can be challenging. The deepest reaches of the caverns (including the Ghost Room have the best formations - the most extensive and the purest white.
What to Bring:
Warm clothing: the cave is 44 degrees Fahrenheit.
Good walking shoes: do not wear open-toed shoes, flip-flops, or sandals.
Gloves are also a good idea.
Remember, you cannot bring your water (or outside liquid) into the cave.
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