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Cave of the Mounds

Photo: Yinan Chen / Public Domain (CC0)

🕳️ Caves

Cave of the Mounds

Blue Mounds, WI · Driftless Area

About

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.

Highlights

National Natural Landmark since 1987Stalactites, soda straws, helictites, and flowstone in reds, browns, blues, and graysStill reflecting pools across the cave floorChambers up to two stories tallLantern tours through total darknessYear-round guided walks, 20 miles west of Madison

Getting there

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Curated guides that feature Cave of the Mounds.

America's Best Caves22 places

America's Best Caves

Step out of the daylight into another world: the longest cave on the planet in Kentucky, a desert chamber big enough to swallow a stadium in New Mexico, an underground waterfall in Tennessee, and a living crystal cavern in Arizona. Some you walk, some you ride a boat through, and one you crawl with a headlamp. America's great caves and caverns, from the national parks to the lantern-lit show caves.