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National park in New Mexico, United States
Photo: Wing-Chi Poon, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Carlsbad Caverns National Park is a national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is located near Carlsbad, New Mexico. It is most famous for the "Big Cave" and its Big Room, at one time considered the largest natural underground chamber in the world. Although no longer claiming that title, it is still one of the world's largest cave rooms, and its unusually extensive and diverse decorations make it a prime destination for the tourist looking to venture underground.
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New Cave
A separate "wild" cave that can be reached on a ranger-led tour. This cave is in the detached part of the park containing Slaughter Canyon, reasonably enough, and requires a short but testing hike aboveground before the cave entrance is reached. Several spectacular formations are visited on this tour.
Another "wild" cave that requires considerable crawling- not for the claustrophobic. The visitor who pays the fee and endures the entrance crawl is rewarded with up-close views of a number of delicate and remarkable formations, perhaps the most famous of which is "The Mace."
The park is about 25 miles (40 km) southwest of the town of Carlsbad, via US Highways 62 and 180 (one road, two designations). This is a good road that is passable year-round except during rare, brief blizzards.
Read in the guideThe elevator to the Big Room leaves from within the visitor center, and the walk from the visitor center to the natural entrance of the Big Cave is very short. Most of the trail in the Big Room is wheelchair-accessible.
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Carlsbad · Regional · CNM
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