Touring the Longhorn Cavern

We always have had an interest in geology and now we are digging deeper into caves, springs, and sinks.  This topic is high on our list because we live in an area where the geology is primarily limestone and with its karsty formation, there are a lot of caves and sinks.  Springs are a bit scarce as water is rather scarce most of the year.

Longhorn Cavern is north and west of Kingsland, and is now part of the Texas Parks system.  The cave is rather unique in that it is one of the few caves in the state that is the result of an underground river that hollowed out its channel and formed the cavern. 

All of that process of forming happened thousands of years ago.  The cavern can best be described by imagining a river of water flowing toward its junction with another river, but in the last mile of this river, it drops down into a hole in the limestone and flows underground for the remaining mile and then empties into the main river.  There it would flow out of a wall of limestone and into the main river.  Now, today, with much less rainfall than the period of thousands of years ago, the tributary river is dry, and so the tunnel created earlier is now a cavern that can be explored with a guide.  It’s about a mile in length. 

The condition of the cavern before its conversion from private property to the state park system was filled with gravel, dirt, tree debris, all left over from its final days of heavy water flow.  There were some areas that were clear and accessible because evidence of Native American activity has been found.  Apparently, the cavern had a few small entrances besides the main entrance from the surface.

During the period of the CCC, the cavern was excavated by hand, with shovels and wheelbarrows, cleaning it of all the debris.  With the intent of making the cavern a part of the state park system, walkways were constructed and lighting installed.  The lighting is considered to be detrimental to the conditions within the cavern, so the lights are turned off behind the touring group.

There are many good photo shoot spots in the cavern.  Here are just a few:

The entrance to the cavern:

The tour is limited to about 20 persons.  That's the volunteer guide to the right.

Here is a dome like section of the cavern. Perhaps it was formed by a separate flow of water from the surface into the main part of the cavern.

This cavern is not known for its complex structures of stalactites and stalagmites, because is was mostly a flow through cavern rather than one that was formed by some other process.  But, here is some of the colorful and complex structure:

At one point on the walk through, there is a stretch of about 150 feet where the ceiling is low and one has to walk bent over. This was easy for some but not for others:

Regarding plant and animal life in the cavern, there is one spot, nearly 50 feet underground where there is a live tree root poking through the ceiling of the cavern.

Also, there are bats in this cavern, but not the common Mexican Freetail.  Contrary to the Mexican Freetail, this small bat is solitary, and quite small. Here is a photo of the bat clinging to the ceiling.  It is about the size of a person’s thumb.

The end of the tour comes when the trail drops down on a steep grade to where there is standing water. The level of this water probably is the level of the adjoining Inks Lake.   There are the usual blind salamanders and shrimp living in these dark pools.

Before Inks Lake dam was built, the local people knew that this cavern exited on the bank of the river forming Inks Lake.  Now that Inks Lake, exists, the exit to the cavern is below the surface of the lake by about 40 feet.

The tour takes about 1.5 hours and well worth the time and entrance fee.

After leaving the park area, we travelled west up along the shore of Inks Lake.  Here, there was evidence of wildfire damage.  Its the wildfire that was described to us  as having covered about 400 acres before it was extinguished.  Reportedly, it was started by a car that was parked in the high grass alongside the road and the hot catalytic converter started the dry grass fire.

When reaching the main road that travelled to the west, we turned here and drove along the base of the Lake Buchanan Dam.  We did not get to seem much of the water in the reservoir as it was down by some 30 feet from normal.  

Turning left, we travelled Kingsland, always on the outlook for a good cup of coffee.  We finally stopped at a Mobil Station where they advertised that they were a Kwik Store.  We knew that they had good coffee, so we stopped.

We chatted at length with a man of about 60 years on various deep subjects like welfare and hard work.  He was of the old school, so we could talk his language.  After some 30 minutes of chit chat between booths of the station, he departed and we did as well.  Headed back to Blanco and on to home.