[MUSIC PLAYING]
It's a small cave or at least we thought.
Hi.
I'm Ranger Dan, and welcome to Jewel Cave National Monument.
In this podcast, we'll discuss the more recent history
of Jewel Cave and how our understanding
of this unique resource has changed since the 1940s.
After its discovery and for almost
60 years later, Jewel Cave was thought
to have been a small cave.
In 1959, a graduate student at the University of Wyoming,
Dwight Deal focused his master's thesis work on Jewel Cave.
Knowing that he would need extra help in surveying
and exploration, Dwight invited his two good friends, Herb
and Jan Conn, to help him with exploration.
The Conns were already well-known
within the rock climbing community,
but they had never been caving.
Their first trip into the cave was love at first sight
and would take the Conns a lifelong journey
of exploration.
Herb and Jan explored Jewel Cave for over 21 years
and surveyed 64 miles of passages.
Although President Theodore Roosevelt
proclaimed Jewel Cave a national monument in 1908,
it was the Conns who initially proved
this was a world class cave system worthy of being
a national icon.
Following World War II, the National Park Service
had decades of undeveloped parks and monuments,
predominantly in the Western United States.
To counter this trend, the agency
was approved for appropriations under a project
called Mission 66.
This project was used to help revitalize many sites
with upgrades to facilities and visitor services.
With the recent cave discoveries in the early 1960s
and no sign of finding the end of Jewel Cave,
the decision was made to upgrade the national monument
with the construction of a modern visitor center,
including the installation of elevators
and the construction of a half mile loop inside of the cave.
Although Historic Lantern Tours would continue,
there was a need to increase the cave experiences in order
to accommodate the ever-growing visitor numbers.
The initial discovery of the Scenic Tour
area within annual cave took place in 1961.
But because the original boundaries
of the monument dated back to a time when most of the cave
was unknown, these new cave passages
were actually outside of those boundaries beneath United
States Forest Service lands.
In order to proceed with plans to develop a new tour route
and visitor center, a land exchange
with the Forest Service was accomplished in 1965,
changing the boundaries of the monument.
Shortly after the boundary changed,
contractors bored a tunnel connecting the cave
to nearby lithograph canyon, allowing easier access
for tools, lights, concrete, and stairs.
Construction occurred both above and below ground
for about six years, with the first scenic tour
taking place over Memorial Day weekend in 1972.
With the opening of the newly constructed tour route,
the monument immediately experienced an explosion
of visitation with future years seeing increases almost
routinely.
Following the retirement of the Conns in the early 1980s,
there was a new generation of cavers
who would continue their legacy of mapping and exploring
Jewel Cave.
The excitement of new discoveries
seems to capture the attention of cavers
from around the world, and the general public
thrives on the notion that the monument
is preserving and protecting one of the world's last frontiers.
Today, local caving enthusiasts take frequent trips
into the cave mapping and surveying
even more cave passages.
This transition from one caving generation to the next
will likely happen for many years into the future.
As the years progress, changes at the monument
will likely occur to accommodate even more visitors,
and the cave will be preserved for those future generations.
Although history often helps us understand
what happened in the past, Jewel Cave
uses its history in order to plan for the future.
[MUSIC PLAYING]