The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Wyandotte Cave

WYANDOTTE CAVE, a remarkable natural curiosity in Crawford co., Indiana, 4 m. from Leavenworth. It is 22 m. in extent, with a maximum width of 300 ft. and a height of 245 ft. The cave is dry, and contains a few narrow passages, but for the most part the galleries are broad and high, and frequently expand into great rooms. The interior presents a wealth of crystalline ornamentations, said to exceed in extent and beauty those of the Mammoth cave. The two most extensive rooms are called Mammoth hall and the Senate chamber. The former is 350 ft. long and 245 ft. high, and contains Monument mountain, 175 ft. high, on the top of which stand three great stalagmites. One of these, called Lot's wife, is pure white, and has the appearance of being draped. Wallace's grand dome rises 70 ft. above the mountain summit, or 245 ft. from the floor of the cave. In the Senate chamber is the Pillar of the Constitution, formed by a stalacto-stalagmitic deposit about 25 ft. in diameter and 30 ft. high, reaching from the top of a great stalagmite hill to the ceiling. Other points of interest are the White Cloud room, with its wave-like walls and ceiling coated with glistening crystals, like a frosting of snow; the Island of Confusion, and Purgatory, where the rocks have the same rich coating; Pillared Palace, with its innumerable stalactites arranged in rich clusters; Beauty's Bower, where the walls are covered with gypsum rosettes as white as snow; the “snow banks,” formed by myriads of fine loose crystals of alabaster; and the gallery, where the floor glistens with acicular crystals of gypsum. In other rooms the stones are covered with fine hair-like crystals of Epsom salts from one to two inches long.