Deconstructing Lehman Caves

This article was originally published in The Midden – Great Basin National Park: Vol. 25, No. 2, Winter 2025.

The author trading in his ranger flat hat for a helmet and his flashlight for a sledge hammer and chisel.

Julia Rose

By Tommy Medford, Park Ranger

Great Basin National Park welcomes tens of thousands of visitors to Lehman Caves every year, but the attraction currently boasts a lighting system that is nearly fifty years old. While the park’s 77,180 acres has much to offer, it is the cave’s half mile of tour paths that typically leaves the biggest impact on visitors. For this reason, a dedicated coalition of park employees and volunteers have been boots on the ground — even during an unprecedented government shutdown — working to expose sealed-off, aging wiring ahead of the installation of a momentous new lighting system.

As a seasonal park interpreter, I had the privilege of leading tour groups through the cave’s sprawling passages this summer. Unfortunately, the interpretive staff felt the effects of the aging lighting system. We couldn’t offer the park’s classic ninety-minute tour that connects the Entrance Tunnel to the Lodge Room, as the lighting system had failed in this area of the cave and replacement parts couldn’t be found. In fact, for the 30-minute Gothic Palace tour, interpreters had to issue handheld lanterns to visitors so there was enough light to see. Iconic shields and gargantuan columns there have remained in the shadows, save for narrow beams from beefy ranger flashlights and the combined glow of twenty lanterns.

The CaveSim portion of our training was definitely more claustrophobia-inducing than the actual demo work and getting one of our cordless vacuums through the trailer was a fun challenge.

Stefany Boleyn

With the cave now closed to the public, I’ve had the privilege of returning to Lehman Caves twice, exchanging my flat hat for a helmet and headlamp to work on the project’s demolition phase and help prepare the cave for it’s new lighting system. It’s very different from the busy summer spent interacting with visitors, but physical cave labor is rewarding in its own way and offers a nice change of pace compared to slow November days down at the Great Basin Visitor Center.

Upon walking into the Lehman Caves Visitor Center, you see that demolishing thousands of feet of grout and concrete requires some organizational prowess. Once teeming with visitors, the bookstore and exhibit space is now chock-full of tools, PPE, buckets, and battery charging stations. Some historic photographs in the theater have been temporarily exchanged with large maps of the tour route, which mark areas completed or identify areas that will need restoration. It’s a well-oiled machine. My favorite part of this machine is undoubtedly the snack table. Kudos especially go to Toilet Ranger Jake for his homemade goodies.

Park staff have been training and working with volunteers, so on my first day I was briefed on the project alongside several new arrivals before knocking out some mandatory morning stretches. Afterwards, Stefany Boleyn, known cave fanatic and one of this summer’s seasonal interpreters, took us over to the park’s CaveSim trailer. Now volunteering, she’s taken on the responsibility of coordinating with the new volunteers as they arrive. In the CaveSim, we were reminded (by screeching beeps) not to bump our helmets or tools on delicate speleothems.

Park staff and volunteers prepare to enter the cave to help remove the old lighting system.

Olivia Ford

After lunch, we got to work. In the Lodge Room, Kirsten Bahr, on loan from Timpanogos Cave National Monument, walked us through demolishing the grout that has been hiding cave wiring from the public for decades. In essence, it’s a simple job: break grout, put that grout in buckets to be hauled out, and keep the cave clean. As any caver knows, what goes in the cave must come out.

Before long, my small team of demolishers was efficiently working away at the perimeter of the room. I worked with a hammer drill to put stress and cracks into the grout while a partner, kneeling right next to me, kept a portable vacuum going to constantly suck away debris. Others came behind us with chisels, mallets, and rock hammers to break up the chunks of grout. Little by little, we worked deeper into the cave. We shielded the cave floor with foam pads from our kit as we went, and communicated with each other often — sometimes nonverbally, above the drone of our tools — about technique. After a while, I realized that we were in front of the Giant’s Ear. It’s where I had stood countless times while giving Parachute Shield tours. But this time I wasn’t in an NPS softshell talking about regional metamorphism and soda straws. Instead, my back ached and I was sweating through a t-shirt. It’s a different kind of fulfillment.

Sledge hammer and chisel in action as TICA Physical Science Technician Kirsten Bahr tests out a new saw technique to score grout just outside the Lodge Room.

Julia Rose

Although I was only around for a fraction of the demolition phase, many volunteers and park staff have put in a combined hundreds of hours to remove thousands of pounds of grout. Visitors to Lehman Caves next year and well into the future will enjoy more comprehensive interpretation thanks in part to the planning and hard work that went into this phase of the project. Max Heaven, a fellow seasonal interpreter, sums it up best:

It's difficult to understand something if you can't see it! This sorely-needed update to the cave lighting system will provide a more illuminating experience for visitors of Lehman Caves and offer them a richer opportunity to connect with the geology and history of our park.

Although my season is drawing to a close, memories of Lehman Caves will stick with me. I never thought that my last foray into the Grand Palace (at least for a while) would be with the lights out, wearing a helmet and carrying a dust mask in my pocket, but I’m glad I was able to give back to the cave after a summer of sharing it with visitors.