Ohio Caverns

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Ohio Caverns

Postby tmazanec1 » Apr 3, 2016 5:07 pm

I am planning to go to Ohio Caverns ( http://www.ohiocaverns.com/ ) this year.
Anyone been there? Any tips on what I should make note of?
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Re: Ohio Caverns

Postby ohiocaver » Apr 3, 2016 6:45 pm

Well, it used to be known as Mt. Tabor Cave and as Reames Cave. It first showed up in the Virginia Military Surveys 4492 and 5044. It's a nice enough commercial cave. But it's no Caverns of Sonora or even Luray.
You will be very close to the High Point of Ohio, Campbell Hill - which is now a vo-tech school with a nice memorial at the top of the hill (at the HS, no underclassmen but only seniors are allowed up there; you can go of course). You are close to the free Aviation Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton...even if you're not into military, it's a pretty cool museum with all sorts of aviation history. :cavingrocks:
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Re: Ohio Caverns

Postby GroundquestMSA » Apr 3, 2016 7:27 pm

Ohio Caverns is Ohio's longest cave, which is mighty glamorous. The passages were originally low, and everything you see on the tour will have been excavated to allow tourists to walk through. I've not seen the tourist bits, but the cave is known for some nice white stal. I was on a survey trip with WUSS a few or five years ago, in an undeveloped section of the cave which may now be included in a tour. The parts I saw were plain and crawly, but the staff were looking for volunteers to dig it out for commercial use.
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Re: Ohio Caverns

Postby tmazanec1 » Jun 6, 2016 4:21 pm

Plan to go around August.
Let you know more about it when I get back.
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Re: Ohio Caverns

Postby tmazanec1 » Aug 18, 2016 2:38 pm

They had two tours, we took both. My cousin liked the historic tour (discovered 1897) but that part of the cave was heavily vandalized.
The natural wonders half of the cave was opened in 1925, and was in better shape. There was one stalagmite which was called the lucky one...if you rubbed it you would have good luck. They stopped that in 1926 but the damage was done, now they call it the dirty stalagmite.
My favorite speleothem was the one that looks like a water pump, but the most interesting were the "dual features"...a stalactite which starts out as brown iron oxide and turns to white calcium carbonate.
There are only five places in the world with this...one in Brazil, three in Europe and this one.
The colors are great for a cave...black and blue from manganese dioxide, orange, brown and red from iron oxide and white from calcite.
Best cave I have seen.
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