America’s Most Colorful Caverns
Nature carved a fairyland beneath the rolling, wooded hills of rural West Liberty, Ohio. Nobody knew that over three miles of the most colorful caverns in America lie below, growing one drip at a time, undisturbed for ages.
This countryside was ripe to have caverns carved by underground water eroding the limestone hillsides. The area, known as the Bellefontaine Outlier, is an unglaciated section that wasn’t flattened like its surroundings.
Rains and time eroded the fertile farming soil, creating a sink hole that revealed a crack in the Columbus Grey Limestone now exposed 10 feet down. It was discovered by a migrant farmhand named Robert Noffsinger who worked William Reams land. He lowered himself into what is today known as Ohio’s oldest attraction for it was only ten days later that Reams began offering tours by lantern light of this natural wonder in August 1897. It was originally marketed as the Mt. Tabor Cave, but locals called it Reams’ Cave. Years later, it was renamed Ohio Caverns, which is still the name today.
Like so many other caves opened for public tours across the nation before protective legislation preserved them, souvenir hunters quickly stripped clean the magnificent stalactite and stalagmite formations. Fortunately, in the early 1920’s, a whole new section of Ohio Caverns was discovered and preserved with its abundance of beauty and truly one-of-a-kind formations. After years of clearing mud and pouring a cement walkway, this protected rarity (known as The Natural Wonder Tour) opened a nondescript door inside the visitors’ center. Since then, generation after generation has descended a concrete stairway to a temperature of 54 degrees Fahrenheit to explore things you just won’t find anywhere else. And so it was for the next 87 years.
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