While camping at Inks Lake, we drove to Longhorn Cavern State Park where we walked a bit over a mile over uneven paths, ducking in low spots as needed — a bit challenging for us in our 70s! But I do love caves and it was worth a few aches.
This cave was formed by an underwater river cutting through the limestone thousands of years ago. Ancient people used one of the then-open sky holes as a trap cave, hunting animals by driving them over the openings. Confederate soldiers put the large deposits of bat guano to use making gunpowder. Comanches hid a captive girl here until she was rescued by the Texas Rangers. In the 1920s, the cave was used as a nightclub with wooden dance floor.
Eventually the cave was filled with run-off rains, mud, and debris. From 1934 to 1942, the C.C.C. dug out the muck by hand, one wheelbarrow at a time, and fashioned stairs and walkways for visitors, the park road, buildings, and an observation tower in the National Park rustic style.
Our tour group was very small so early in the morning, allowing us more personal time and extra stories from the tour guide. The following photos were taken with an iPhone with no flash, so as not to disturb the tiny tri-colored bats we found.
During the tour, all of us adults took one look at the rock “dog” in my above sketch and decided the C.C.C. workers had carved it as a prank. Only the child in the group got it right, thinking it was a real rock. The workers found it in a different part of the cave, saw the dog shape, and decided to set it up where visitors could enjoy it.
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