Timpanogos Cave

There are three caves in the cliffs above American Fork Canyon, and each was found by accident. Martin Hansen was cutting timber in October 1887 when he followed cougar tracks up the canyon wall and found the first of them. Word got out, and what the Duke Onyx Company and the general public did to Hansen Cave over the next few decades is the reason the other two are now guarded so closely: formations were broken off and sold, and a great deal of the chamber was simply stripped.

In the summer of 1913 two teenagers, James Gough and Frank Johnson, were scrambling up a slope near Hansen Cave while their families explored it and found the entrance to what is now Timpanogos Cave, with the Great Heart of Timpanogos hanging inside it. Then the entrance was lost again, either to a landslide or to the secrecy of the people who had seen it, and it stayed lost for years. The three caves were finally joined in the 1930s when the Works Progress Administration blasted connecting tunnels, and the whole system became a national monument.

People come up now for the helictites. Most cave decoration obeys gravity: water drips, calcite builds downward, and you get a stalactite. Helictites ignore it entirely, twisting sideways and curling back on themselves as water creeps through a hollow straw and evaporates at the tip. Timpanogos has them in unusual number, alongside flowstone, drapery, cave bacon and cave popcorn.

Getting there is the part people underestimate. The trail is a mile and a half, paved and reasonably wide, but it climbs 1,092 feet to reach the entrance, and the cave holds a steady 46 degrees Fahrenheit whatever the canyon is doing. Tours are guided only and usually run May to September, depending on snow and on funding. Reserve a ticket before you drive up.