Official Kids Mag staff
One of the most amazing natural
wonders is right here in Northwest
Arkansas, and it's 400 feet
underground!
It's Cosmic Cavern, a place
with incredible sights, bottomless
lakes, and things you just won't see
anywhere else.
A tour of this place in Berryville,
Arkansas will take you to spooky
underworld corridors and rooms,
where you'll see weird sights—
"ghosts," "curly fries," clumps of
"worms," even Santa —and they're
all actually cave formations called
speleothems.
The cave was first discovered
by a miner named John Moore in
1845, when he and his sons were
searching for lead. They were the
ones that found the first of the
two mysterious underground lakes.
Soon, other people came, this time
to mine the gemstone onyx near
the cave's entrance. You can still see
soot from their torches.
Fourteen different people have
owned the cave. Randy and Anita
Langhover, the current owners,
bought it in 1980. Before being
called Cosmic Cavern, it was known
by other names — Bear Cave,
Majestic Cave and Mystery Cave.
In 1993, Mr. Langhover found
another room in the cave and he
and his crew started to excavate
it. "We dug by flashlight, and
finally had to quit because we ran
out of places to put the dirt and
rock," he said. It was then that
he and his crew saw the second
lake, its silent, emerald waters kept
undisturbed for centuries until that
moment.
One type of stalactite is called a
soda straw, because it's long and
skinny. In one section of Cosmic
Cavern called the North Lake
Passage, you'll find the biggest soda
straw in the Ozarks — it's nine feet
long! You could drink a lot of soda
with a straw like that!
Another cool thing you'll see at
Cosmic is something you might call a
"bacon curtain." It looks like bacon,
but it's actually a very thin sheet of
folded minerals. Many have stripes
that make them look like bacon.
You'll also see "cave popcorn" on
the walls…are you getting hungry?
Do you know how underground
caves and their amazing features
were created? Cosmic Cavern, like
other caves in Arkansas, is made
of limestone. Over time, water
washes over the rock, and the acid
in it eats away the limestone to
form hollow underground spaces.
await at
Cosmic Cavern!
28 • May 2022 • www.OfficialKidsMag.com
