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Wind Cave National Park
Black Hills park of boxwork caves and bison prairie
Wind Cave breathes. Air rushes in or out of its small natural entrance as atmospheric pressure changes outside, and that whistling draft led settlers Tom and Jesse Bingham to the opening in 1881, though the Lakota had long known it. Behind it lies one of the longest and most complex caves in the world, with about 168 miles (270 km) of mapped passages. The cave is famed for boxwork, thin blades of calcite that form honeycomb patterns on ceilings and walls, and holds the world's largest known concentration of the rare formation.
President Theodore Roosevelt signed the bill creating the park in January 1903, making Wind Cave the first cave anywhere protected as a national park. Lakota tradition identifies the cave as the place where the people emerged onto the earth, and it remains a sacred site. Above ground, the park covers about 53 square miles (137 km²) of mixed-grass prairie and ponderosa pine at the southern edge of the Black Hills, where bison, elk, pronghorn and prairie dogs roam. Jewel Cave, even longer, lies about 30 miles (48 km) to the northwest, with no known connection.