A Smithsonian party visited in July 1880, two years after the cave was found, and reported that there is probably no other cave in the world more completely and profusely decorated with stalactite and stalagmite ornamentation. That verdict has held up. Luray is the most heavily decorated show cave in the eastern United States, hung with columns, stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone and pools so still they mirror the ceiling exactly, which is how Dream Lake manages to look twice as deep as its actual few inches of water.
The thing people come back for, though, is an instrument. The Great Stalacpipe Organ is a lithophone covering roughly three and a half acres of the cave: solenoid driven rubber tipped mallets strike stalactites of carefully chosen sizes, and the stone rings. Leland Sprinkle spent three years from 1954 finding and shaving stalactites to pitch. Played from a console like an organ, it produces a tone somewhere between a xylophone, a tuning fork and a bell, and the sound arrives from all around you rather than from a stage, because the instrument is the room.
The cave lies just west of Luray, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley, and has been privately owned by the same family for generations, since Theodore Clay Northcott bought the land in 1905.
The tour route curves down through the caverns past Dream Lake, the Saracen's Tent, the organ, the Wishing Well and the Fried Eggs formation, then climbs back out. It runs about a mile and a half and takes between forty five minutes and an hour, and a step free route is now available. Small pets can be carried through, which is not something most show caves allow.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
