Blanchard Springs is the odd one out among American show caves. It is the only tourist cave owned by the United States Forest Service, and the only federally owned show cave outside the National Park System, which means it is run by the same agency that manages the timber above it rather than by a park service or a family company.
It sits in the Ozark-St Francis National Forest in Stone County, northern Arkansas, two miles off Highway 14 just north of Mountain View, and it is a three level system with all three levels visitable.
The Dripstone Trail opened in 1973 and runs about half a mile through the uppermost level, which is the heavily decorated part. The Discovery Trail opened in 1977 and is the more interesting walk: a 1.2 mile loop that drops to the lower level, 366 feet underground, and follows the bed of the stream that cut the cave in the first place. It passes the Rimstone Dams, where calcite has built low barriers across the streambed and ponded water behind them, and the Ghost Room, a small chamber dominated by an enormous white flowstone. The trail also reaches the Natural Entrance, about a hundred feet below ground.
For anyone who wants the version without handrails, the Wild Cave tour has taken people into undeveloped passage upstream (it is not among the tours the Forest Service currently lists, so ask before planning around it), showing all three levels the way the original explorers found them and continuing past the end of the Discovery Trail.
Locals knew the cave through the 1930s and called it Half-Mile Cave. Systematic exploration came later, and the Forest Service developed it carefully enough that it opened with lighting and trail design that were considered a model at the time. Tours are guided, and tickets are bought in advance on Recreation.gov.
The caverns are open in season, spring to late fall, Thursday to Monday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with tours starting between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.; they close on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Tickets must be bought beforehand on Recreation.gov: $15 from age 16, $10 for ages 6 to 15, and free for children 5 and under. Only service animals may go into the visitor center or the caverns, though leashed pets can use the recreation area outside.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
