Three Caves, Three Crowns

America's three cave national parks do not compete with each other. Each one owns a different crown. Mammoth Cave is the longest cave system on earth. Carlsbad Caverns is the most beautiful cave in the country. Wind Cave holds the rarest cave formation on the planet. Pick the crown you want to see.

Mammoth Cave National Park

Mammoth Cave wears the crown of scale. More than 400 miles of passageways have been mapped beneath south central Kentucky, and explorers are still finding new tunnels. The four mile Grand Avenue Tour walks through room after room of it, past the Giant's Coffin and the Bottomless Pit. For the raw version, the Wild Cave Tour sends you crawling by headlamp through undeveloped passages. The cave holds 54 degrees year round, but spring and fall are the time to go. About an hour and a half from Louisville and Nashville, an easy pairing with Kentucky bourbon country.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Carlsbad Caverns wears the crown of beauty. Its centerpiece is the Big Room, the largest single cave chamber in North America, a limestone hall 4,000 feet long that feels more like a cathedral than a cave. Walk down the steep Natural Entrance Trail instead of taking the elevator, descending 750 feet the way the early explorers entered. The most richly decorated rooms, the King's Palace and its neighbors, open only on ranger guided tours. From late spring through fall, hundreds of thousands of bats spiral out of the cave mouth at dusk. About two and a half hours from El Paso in southeastern New Mexico, and pairs naturally with Guadalupe Mountains National Park just across the Texas line.

Wind Cave National Park

Wind Cave wears the crown of rarity. Beneath the Black Hills of South Dakota it holds about 95 percent of the world's known boxwork, a honeycomb patterned calcite formation found almost nowhere else. It is not conventionally beautiful. Its value is pure rarity. The cave opens only on ranger guided tours, from the Natural Entrance Tour to a crawl by headlamp Wild Cave Tour of its own. Summer is the time to go, when every tour runs daily. About an hour from Rapid City, with Badlands National Park and Custer State Park an easy drive away.

Three caves, three crowns, and no wrong choice. Chase scale at Mammoth, beauty at Carlsbad, rarity at Wind Cave. The only mistake is expecting one cave to be all three. One honest note for trip planners. These three do not form a neat road trip. Mammoth sits in Kentucky, Carlsbad in southern New Mexico, Wind Cave in South Dakota. Each one is a detour in its own right.