Frozen Niagara section of Mammoth Cave

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For reviews of all Mammoth Cave National Park tours, how to get tickets, what to wear, and rules for the tours, see the Cave Tours web page here on National Park Planner. Keep in mind that not all tours are offered year-round, and the schedule of what tours are available changes often. Be sure to check the National Park Service’s official Cave Tours web page for the current schedule.

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OVERVIEW

Anyone who has been inside Mammoth Cave has certainly noticed that the large majority of the passageways accessible to tourists lack speleothems, which is the collective name for stalactites, stalagmites, and other calcite formations most people associate with a cave. This is because speleothems require slow, dripping water to form, and a sandstone caprock covers most of Mammoth Cave, preventing water from leaking in. However, the caprock is patchy in some areas of the park, and in a few places where it does exist, it has developed cracks.

At the southeastern end of Mammoth Cave National Park is a section of cave that is full of spectacular calcite formations, and this section is visited on the two-hour Domes and Dripstones Tour. It is open to all ages. Those 15 and under must be accompanied by someone 18 or older. Infants cannot be carried in a back harness but can be carried in a harness attached to the chest.

The Domes and Dripstones Tour covers three quarters of a mile of the cave. There are 640 stair steps on the standard route plus another 96 at the end of the tour that involve an optional side trip. The National Park Service describes the tour as “difficult” due to the stairs, but if you don’t have a problem walking up and down stairs, it’s not difficult at all. I’m 59 years old and not in the greatest shape, and I’d rate it as moderate. My daughter and her friend, who typically start complaining five minutes into a hike on level ground, didn’t ask “How much longer?” a single time.

Visitors descend a staircase on the Domes and Dripstones Tour at Mammoth Cave National Park

Many tours of Mammoth Cave have overlapping routes, some to the extent that they are complete duplicates of each other. The Grand Avenue Tour covers much of the Domes and Dripstones Tour, including the highlight of the trip, the calcite formations at the Frozen Niagara. It does not cover the walk into the cave through a sinkhole or the walk through 14 vertical domes and pits, all of which is pretty neat (the two tours use different entrances). However, whether it is worth taking both tours is up for debate.

I’m not a big fan of the Grand Avenue Tour. It is extremely long (4 hours) and difficult, and three quarters of it are very similar to what is seen on the much shorter Cleaveland Avenue Tour (in fact, a third of that is Cleaveland Avenue). It does, however, pass through a mile of slot canyons that aren’t seen on any other tour, and that section is as cool as the sinkhole and vertical domes visited on Domes and Dripstones. Unless you have a lot of extra time on your hands, I suggest either the Domes and Dripstones / Cleaveland Avenue combo or simply the Grand Avenue Tour. If you do choose both Grand Avenue and Domes and Dripstones, you certainly don’t need to do the Cleaveland Avenue Tour as well.

The Domes and Dripstones Tour covers all of the Frozen Niagara Tour, so you definitely don’t need to do both. However, choosing between the two is a no-brainer. Domes and Dripstones is without a doubt the better tour, but it is more difficult. The Frozen Niagara, on the other hand, is one of the easiest tours given at Mammoth Cave National Park. It heads directly to the Frozen Niagara from the Frozen Niagara entrance, which was blasted through the rocks back in 1924 specifically to get tourists to and from the Frozen Niagara faster. More tours per day, more money. It is a quarter mile long and only has 64 stair steps plus the 96 for the optional side trip. If you have physical limitations, the Frozen Niagara Tour makes perfect sense. Otherwise, unless there simply aren’t any tickets left for Domes and Dripstones, there is no reason to choose the Frozen Niagara Tour.

If neither of these tours fits your schedule and you still want to see calcite formations, the only other options are the Great Onyx Lantern Tour and the Wondering Woods Tour. These both visit caves within Mammoth Cave National Park, but they aren’t connected to Mammoth Cave. There are also a FEW formations seen on the Gothic Avenue Tour or any tour that enters Gothic Avenue. However, Gothic Avenue, while worth visiting for many reasons, is certainly no substitute for the abovementioned tours when it comes to speleothems.

INSIDE THE CAVE

The Domes and Dripstones Tour enters Mammoth Cave through the New Entrance, a manmade entrance created in 1921 by George Morrison. Morrison had been looking to get into the cave tourism business, and he knew that Mammoth Cave extended well beyond the boundaries of the land owned by the Mammoth Cave Estate, the trust that operated the cave at the time. He noticed that water was draining into a particular sinkhole and that cold air was coming from it, a good indication of a cave. He purchased the property in 1921 and then proceeded to blast a hole in the rocks to create an entrance. As he explored the cave, he ended up in part of Mammoth Cave that was currently being toured, so he knew his cave was connected. This allowed him to promote it as Mammoth Cave. He built some wooden stairs to the bottom and opened his New Entrance to Mammoth Cave.

The New Entrance into Mammoth Cave is now guarded by a steel door

In 1926, the United States Congress passed legislation to create Mammoth Cave National Park from donated or purchased land (no seizure by eminent domain), and the government wanted Morrison’s section of the cave. At first he refused to sell, but he finally did so in 1932 for a price of $290,000. The park eventually opened in 1941 with roughly 45,000 acres.

Morrison’s wooden stairs continued to be used until the 1960s, at which time the cave was closed for safety reasons. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that the wooden stairs were finally replaced with the steel stairs that are used in the cave today.

Visitors on the Domes and Dripstones Tour descend to the bottom of Mammoth Cave from the New Entrance via a modern steel staircase

The Domes and Dripstones Tour starts off by descending into the sinkhole first noticed by Morrison. A sinkhole is very similar to a sink in a kitchen or bathroom. It is bowl-shaped, and rain water drains into it. In this area of Mammoth Cave National Park, the water eventually worked its way into the ground, and over millions of years, eroded away the soft limestone underneath, creating many vertical shafts (domes) and other pits. As you take the stairs to the bottom 250 feet below the surface, you pass through 14 such vertical domes. The descent into the cave is probably the coolest thing about the tour.

The journey to the bottom of Mammoth Cave on the Domes and Dripstones Tour leads through many narrow and twisting passageways

The Domes and Dripstones Tour at Mammoth Cave National Park passes through many vertical domes on the way to the bottom of the cave

At the bottom is a large area with benches. This is the first stop on the tour, and it is here that the Ranger talks about the history of the cave.

Lecture area at the bottom of the first staircase on the Domes and Dripstones Tour at Mammoth Cave National Park

After the history lecture the tour continues farther into the cave, this time starting off by climbing stairs.

Once at the bottom, the Domes and Dripstones Tour continues farther into Mammoth Cave

As you walk farther into the cave, notice that there still are no stalactites or stalagmites. The water that carved out the domes and passageways was moving too fast to create speleothems. This water eventually moved farther underground, and these passageways dried out. The sandstone cap above prevented additional ground water from dripping slowly into the cave. The only difference in this part of Mammoth Cave and the main passageway accessible from the Historic Entrance is that here the cave is narrow with low ceilings, whereas the main passageway is huge, or as the name states, mammoth.

The Domes and Dripstones Tour passes through a dry section of Mammoth Cave

The Domes and Dripstones Tour passes through a dry section of Mammoth Cave

The tour eventually comes to the Frozen Niagara, a section of cave Morrison did not discover until 1923, two years after creating his New Entrance. In this area the water did drip into the cave, creating the most spectacular display of calcite formations within any part of Mammoth Cave that is open to tourists.

Domes and Dripstones tour arrives at the Frozen Niagara section of Mammoth Cave

Cave operators promoted their tours by giving the formations within their caves spectacular, theatrical names. Seeing that many people who came to Mammoth Cave in the early days were from the north, Morrison named the most prominent feature, a massive flowstone formation created by water dripping down a cave wall, the Frozen Niagara, playing upon the northern tourists’ familiarity with Niagara Falls in New York. It is not false advertising, because the formation does look like a frozen waterfall.

The Frozen Niagara, Mammoth Cave National Park

Flowstone and other calcite formations at the Frozen Niagara section of Mammoth Cave

Flowstone formations at the Frozen Niagara section of Mammoth Cave

There is an option to take a detour down 48 stairs (and 48 back up) for those who want to journey into the Drapery Room. Drapery is flowstone that hangs down from the ceiling to create curtain-like formations. You can see the sides of the drapery without venturing down the stairs, but you can’t look up into it without taking the detour. If you’ve made it this far, another 96 stairs certainly isn’t going to kill you.

Staircase into the Drapery Room at the Frozen Niagara section of Mammoth Cave

View of the Drapery Room Ceiling at the Frozen Niagara section of Mammoth Cave

The Frozen Niagara is the last stop on the tour, and from there participants exit the cave at the nearby Frozen Niagara Entrance. Those who take the Frozen Niagara Tour would simply enter here, walk the short distance to the Frozen Niagara, and then walk back and exit the same way they came in.

Domes and Dripstones Tour exits Mammoth Cave through the Frozen Niagara Entrance

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