How Is Wind Cave Different From Other Caves?

Mr. Hawkins

Wind Cave is known for its length and the maze-like configuration of its passageways. Almost all of the known cave passageways lie beneath a land area of about one mile square making this the most complex maze cave in the world. Few caves are longer than Wind Cave, but none as complex.

Cave Formations

A cave is defined as an opening in the earth large enough to hold a person. Most caves are created when slowly-moving water dissolves, or eats away at limestone rock, creating spaces, caverns, and tunnel-like passages. Wind Cave began developing millions of years ago, but most of the cave forming activity was pretty slow until the uplift of the Black Hills which occurred between 40 and 60 million years ago. This uplift opened fractures in the limestone allowing water to enter the limestone and more cave to form. The waters that made Wind Cave probably sat in the limestone for long periods of time. Water did not flow through the cave like a river. This way the water had plenty of time to dissolve passageways along the many small cracks, developing the complex maze-like pattern that you can see on the cave map.

Wind Cave is quite different from other caves. Instead of stalactites and stalagmites, the cave is decorated with boxwork. Boxwork is a crystalline formation that probably predates the cave. Approximately 95 percent of the world's discovered boxwork formations are found in Wind Cave 

Boxwork Formations

Cave Formations or Speleothems

Caves are home to many interesting features or speleothems. Wind Cave is known for a unique formation call boxwork. In other caves the most common speleothems are stalactites and stalagmites. They form when water drips into the cave leaving behind a little bit of calcite. As each drop falls, more calcite is left behind creating stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, and/or dripstone. When the water drips from the cave ceiling a stalactite begins to grow. While stalactites grow from the ceiling, stalagmites are formations that grow up from the ground. When they meet, they form a cave column. In Wind Cave these types of water formations are rare.

Cave Life

Caves are found deep in the earth and are worlds without sunlight. Without sunlight, plants can't grow. So food is carried into caves by either streams or small openings that let organic material wash into it. Wind Cave does not have a river or stream in it so food in is pretty scarce. So life beyond the entrance to the cave is limited to very small organisms such as mites and springtails. Below is a list of the types of life one might find in a cave.

· Trogloxenes - are casual visitors. They will visit a cave for a short period of time but they have to leave the cave to complete their life cycle. Bats are the creatures most people associate with caves. Wind Cave National Park hosts eight species of bats, six of which are cave-dwelling however they are not commonly seen in Wind Cave. Bats are trogloxenes because they must leave the cave to feed.

· Troglobites can spend their whole life in a cave, but they don't need to. Wind Cave has a few salamanders that spend their life in the cave.

· Troglobite are fully adapted to live in a cave. They spend their whole life cycle in a cave. Many do not have eyes or pigment in their skin. In Wind Cave these are the springtails and mites that are found in the far reaches of the cave.