Hi everyone!

Today we will be talking about my family’s experience at the Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

As many of you know, I started my travel blog back in the spring of 2022 and during that time, I have kept this content Oklahoma based.

And it still will be that way going forward. However, from time to time, I want to share my out of state experiences with you to give you a fun and entertaining mixture of places. Because all in all, the world is a big place and I want to share these experiences with you to the fullest.

The Carlsbad Caverns National Park is a must-see park located in Southeastern New Mexico. I will give you a complete review of what to expect, so if you do decide to go, you will have a clear understanding beforehand.

Without further ado, let’s jump into the article!

For more information on this park, here is a link that is very helpful.

So Spring Break came awful quick for our family. It seems like the year has already flown by.

My wife Dawna and I were looking for a reasonable trip within a day’s drive from Norman, Oklahoma to see something we haven’t gotten to experience.

We absolutely love the state of New Mexico. I mean what’s not to like?

From the yummy Mexican food and Art Galleries in Santa Fe to the Marvelous White Sands in Alamogordo, you have different pockets in the land of enchantment that are worth seeing.

So, we decided to embark on an 8-hour journey to Southeastern New Mexico this time around and hit the Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

Let me tell you, we will want to make a 2nd trip out there with more family if the opportunity presents itself!

This park contains some of the largest caves in North America!

As you make your way through the Chihuahuan Desert and Guadalupe Mountains of SE New Mexico and West Texas, the last thing you would expect is that there are more than 300 known caves beneath the surface!

The park contains 113 of these caves, formed by sulfuric acid dissolved in the surrounding limestone. This was like being present in a crazy Sci-Fi movie!

Beforehand, when I was at the young age of 19, I got to experience another known park on the other side of the country called Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.

Mammoth feels more primitive whereas Carlsbad feels well-maintained and controlled.

To compare these two caves would be a disservice to both of them. They are completely different.

This cave exceeded not just my expectations, but my family’s as well.

The most adequate way of describing it was being present in living artwork.

You have a couple of options here. You can either do a park ranger guided tour- (which I will probably do this next time), or you can choose the self-guided tour into the natural entrance.

We chose the latter of course. The 1.25-mile natural entrance trail descends down 750 feet leading into what they call is the “big room”.

While there are definite standouts such as the Lion’s tail and the Green Lake Room, the big room is the jaw-dropping portion of the cave.

Where the steep path levels out are where one trail will actually end and another one will begin.

The variety of sculptures, ice sickle like structures, and totem poles can be found throughout the caverns.

The scenes in the cave were out of this world and pictures just don’t do this place any justice.

If you are physically able, I suggest that you at least hike down into the cavern. This is a deep, dark, and long path just giving you the heads up.

The rangers will warn you of this, but I saw several people in their mid to late forties who were candidates for receiving a pulse check.

Other than loving a hike, the reason I recommend the Natural Entrance is that you are able to see much more of the cave vs taking the elevator down.

After we reached the bottom, we gladly took the elevator back up due to our legs being shot.

The walk from the visitor’s center to the outdoor auditorium is only about 10 minutes. You can still see the mouth of the cave even if you decide not to hike down into it.

So, the question remains, who was the first person to come across this North American Gem?

As far as I know, the first person to have embarked on this is Jim White.

Jim was born in 1882 and was raised in Mason County, Texas. At age 10, he was dropped off by his father at the well-known XXX Ranch located at the edge of the Guadalupe Mountains to learn how to be a cowboy.

Fast forward six years, in the summer of 1898, Jim noticed what he thought was smoke on the horizon from a brush fire or volcanic eruption on top of the mountains.

Upon reaching the mouth of the cave, the smoke turned out to be the exodus of millions of bats. After watching this vortex for a couple of hours, he surmised that any cave that could house this many bats must be incredibly huge.

Jim wasn’t wrong.

His curiosity about the huge cave drove him to make a hand-made ladder out of fence wire and cut tree limbs.

His lantern was actually made out of a tin coffee pot that he poured oil into from the top and stuffed a wick down the long sprout. Only one can imagine what he was about to experience for the first time.

So, he descended down from the sunlit direction towards the blackness of the big room 750 feet down. Little did he know that this was about to draw people from all over the world.

Jim typically liked to enter the cave while the bats were in season. My guess was in the ballpark of May – October.

Several years later Abijah Long sought Jim out, having heard of his adventures into the cave.

Jim showed Abijah the Bat Cave and in March of 1903, Abijah gave Jim the green light to be his foreman of operations and to which he wasted no time to filing a claim to mine it.

In 1912, when New Mexico was admitted into the union, Jim and his wife Fanny decided to live near Carlsbad. The Carlsbad Guano and Fertilizer company built them a 2-room shack close to the cave and paid Jim a meager salary of 175 dollars a month.

But the turning point of this story was started by a man of the name of Ray Davis.

Jim had sent Ray into the cavern to photograph this national wonder, and this was the turning point in the cavern’s future.

Excursions started with Jim lowering amateur cavers down the mining shaft with the guano bucket. Some of these people were Carlsbad residents and word of mouth spread quickly throughout the town.

So, in April of 1923, the General Land office in Washington D.C. sent a surveyor to the cave to determine if it was worthy of protection.

Mineral examiner Robert Holley completed a month-long survey of the cave. His report included this- it was National Monument Status!

So, in October of 1923, President Calvin Coolidge declared the cave a National Park from the recent findings.

Unlike most National Parks, Carlsbad Caverns National Park requires advanced reservations for entry. We made our reservations about 5 weeks out. The reservations cost us 3 dollars and you have a 60-minute window based on the time that you choose.

For example, we had a reservation for 10:30 in the morning. I was worried about parking on spring break, but they had plenty of parking available. We had until 11:30 to enter the cave.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park is remote. Very remote. You either go way out of your way, or you make this a destination in itself. No in between. The closest major cities are El Paso, TX which is 150 miles to the west, or Albuquerque, NM which is 300 miles to the Northwest.

Coming from Norman, we went to Wichita Falls, Tx and cut through all of the small West Texas towns. Some might call this a boring drive. However, give me boring over the stress of driving through Dallas any day of the week!

As far as hotel accommodations are concerned, don’t expect any in the tiny town of Carlsbad.

We elected to stay about an hour North of the Park in the town of Artesia, NM.

You are limited on food options in this part of the state as well. We brought our ice chest and packed our favorite snacks and sandwiches because of how remote this park was.

You do have some small local Mexican Restaurants in Artesia along with Fast Food chains, but the restaurants were not what we are used to from our point of view. They are ok, but nothing great.

Roswell, NM which is an hour, and a half North of the park will be your best bet for food options. This was too far of a drive for what we were wanting to accomplish. So, Artesia, NM it was.

Okay, let’s talk about Gas.

Please consider making this a priority when visiting this part of the state. You have plenty of gas stations in Artesia, but you are limited once you go south.

You do have a place called White’s City, which is about 15 minutes from the park which is more expensive than the others and that is it.

Many people like to head on over to the Guadalupe Mountains National Park which is 30 minutes SW of the Caverns. We will discuss that park next week on my blog, but you don’t have any options outside of white’s city. Fill up before your trip if you decide to go to one or both of them.

And that will wrap things up for today. Carlsbad Caverns National Park is unlike any National Park that I have ever witnessed. If you’re asking me for my advice, I recommend making this a destination trip. Take your time, come prepared, and expect to be blown away from the natural wonders that this cave has to offer. I hope you enjoyed this article. Please share your experiences with Carlsbad Caverns National Park in the comment section below.

-CT