Cave of the Mounds
Blue Mounds, WI · Driftless Area
Twenty miles west of Madison, a routine 1939 quarry blast tore open a hidden room and revealed what locals now call the jewel box of the Midwest. The walls drip with stalactites, soda straws, and helictites stained red and brown by iron, with cool blues and grays where manganese took hold, all of it mirrored in still pools that sit dead calm on the cave floor. Take the year-round guided walk through chambers two stories tall, or come for a lantern tour and find your way through the dark the way the first explorers did in the year it was found.