- Where
- Guadalupe Mountains
south-eastern New Mexico - Coordinates
- 32.17° N
104.45° W - The Big Room
- About 4,000 ft long
255 ft high at its highest - Protected
- National monument 1923
national park 1930 - World Heritage
- 1995
- Getting there
- By road from White’s City
timed-entry reservation for the cavern - Best visited
- Year-round; the bat flight from late May to October
- Advisory
- United States
(no State Department level)
Thorny scrub on a hot stony ridge, and then a lift dropped us into the hill and opened on cool, dripping air. The room down there ran on past the lamps, hung with stone like melted candles. As the sky dimmed we sat on rough benches above the great black mouth, and the bats poured out like smoke. I held on to the bench until the last had gone.
The short answer
Carlsbad Caverns National Park lies in the Guadalupe Mountains of south-eastern New Mexico, its entrance on US Highway 62/180 at White’s City, about 20 miles south-west of the town of Carlsbad and 145 miles north-east of El Paso, Texas (Park Service). Its main attraction is Carlsbad Cavern, a show cave with paved trails, electric lights and elevators. The cavern’s Big Room is almost 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide and 255 feet high at its highest point, Wikipedia records; the Park Service calls it the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America. The park holds more than 119 caves. Carlsbad Cave became a national monument in 1923, the national park was created in 1930, and the park became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995.
Why it's worth knowing
A cave dissolved from below. About 250 million years ago the area was the coast of an inland sea, and a reef of sponges, bryozoans and other organisms grew along it; the reef was later buried, then lifted and worn back into the Guadalupe Mountains, Wikipedia records. The caves formed late, and unusually: hydrogen sulfide seeping up from petroleum deposits far below met oxygen in the groundwater and made sulfuric acid, which dissolved the limestone upwards. The gypsum found in the cave is the by-product of that reaction. Only after the acid water drained away did the dripping formations begin to grow, and the natural entrance opened by erosion within the last million years.
The Big Room. Visitors reach it on their own, either down the Natural Entrance Trail, 1.25 miles and about 750 feet of descent, the height of a 75-storey building, or by elevator from the visitor centre to the Underground Rest Area, the Park Service says. The Big Room Trail is another 1.25 miles and takes about an hour and a half; a shortcut cuts it to about 0.6 miles. The actor Will Rogers called the cavern “the Grand Canyon with a roof over it”, the Park Service records. Until 1932 visitors had to walk down a switchback ramp 750 feet into the cave and back up again; that year a new visitor centre opened with two elevators, Wikipedia records.
The bats. Seventeen species of bat live in the park, the Park Service says, and the most famous is the large summer colony of Brazilian free-tailed bats in the cavern. Its resident colony was around 400,000 in the summer of 2005, and during migration numbers were documented as high as 793,000 that year, counted by researchers from Boston University with thermal cameras. The bats leave at dusk in a dense column that, by Wikipedia’s account, corkscrews upwards and can last about three hours, and they return in steep dives before dawn. The Park Service asks visitors to bring no electronic device of any kind to the evening programme, because light and sound disturb bats used to darkness and silence.
The field notes
A wire ladder and a lantern
In 1898 a teenager named Jim White explored the cavern with a homemade wire ladder and named many of its rooms and formations, among them the Big Room, the King’s Palace, the Queen’s Chamber, the Bottomless Pit and Iceberg Rock, Wikipedia records; it says he first went to look after seeing the bats from a distance and taking them for a volcano or a whirlwind, and that his lantern went out in the Queen’s Chamber, leaving him in the dark for over half an hour. The Bottomless Pit turned out to be about 140 feet deep, its floor of soft dirt swallowing the sound of the stones thrown in. The town of Carlsbad, which gave the cavern its name, was named after the Bohemian spa town of Karlsbad, now Karlovy Vary.
Balloons, and a bomb far away
In 1985 explorers reached a room 255 feet above the Big Room floor by floating a light cord up on a balsa-wood loop tied to helium balloons, looping it over a stalagmite and hauling a climbing rope after it; they named the room the Spirit World, for white stalagmites that looked to them like angels. In the early 1960s, when the military was testing whether the cavern could serve as a fallout shelter, the Green Lake in one of its rooms was watched for ripples from a nuclear test many miles away; none appeared. And on 31 October 2013 a cave technician found a chamber about 100 feet across high above the Spirit World, named it Halloween Hall, and found more than 1,000 bat bones in it (all from Wikipedia).
The cave next door
Lechuguilla Cave, also in the park, was a guano pit until 1986, when cavers given permission to dig through a rubble pile where wind whistled between the rocks broke into the cave beyond. More than 120 miles of passage have since been explored and mapped, to a depth of 1,600 feet, Wikipedia records; access is limited to permitted scientific expeditions. Bacteria found there that resist antibiotics, in a cave sealed from the surface, are evidence that antibiotic resistance is ancient and widespread in bacteria.
Bats spiral out of the Natural Entrance at dusk, July 2006.
Photograph: National Park Service, Peter Jones · Public domain (PD-USGov, US National Park Service)
The Chandelier, a hanging mass of stalactites in the Big Room, January 2021.
Photograph: National Park Service, Anthony Mazzucco · Public domain (PD-USGov, US National Park Service)
Draperies and flowstone along the Big Room trail, October 2017.
Photograph: National Park Service, Daniel Leifheit · Public domain (PD-USGov, US National Park Service) · cropped
The Natural Entrance from the amphitheatre, in the Chihuahuan Desert, May 2024.
Photograph: dconvertini · Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico, USA 5-2024 8 · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
- Walk in by the natural mouth, slowly, and let the daylight leave you a little at a time.
- Leave every gadget in the car for the evening flight. It is their door, and they are going out to supper.
- Walk the whole of the great room. (Walked it. There was a little room off it, and a littler room off that. The list has acquired a cellar.)
- Choose shoes with a good grip, and a woolly layer, whatever the sun is doing up top.
- Come back before dawn and sit by the mouth again. Whatever goes out must come home.
A rope ladder. Along the Big Room Trail, among the formations, the Park Service points out a rope ladder used by explorers in 1924. The rooms that visitors now cross on a paved trail in about an hour and a half were first reached with ropes and ladders: Jim White began in 1898 with a homemade wire ladder, Wikipedia records. The ladder is seen from the trail, on the self-guided route, and stays where it is.
Tally, in the marginI was well past the rope ladder before it caught up with me: somebody climbed that into the black without knowing what was at the top. I went back and stood under it for a while, keeping my feet very firmly on the floor.
Getting there
How to get there. By road. The park’s only entrance road, Carlsbad Caverns Highway, turns north from US Highway 62/180 at White’s City and runs 7 miles to the visitor centre and the cavern entrance (Park Service). Carlsbad is served by Greyhound buses, with rental cars and taxis at its airport; the Park Service lists the airports of Roswell and Albuquerque in New Mexico and El Paso, Lubbock and Midland in Texas as served by major airlines, and gives driving distances of 103 miles from Roswell and 151 miles from El Paso.
When to go. The cavern is open all year except Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, and holds about 56°F (13°C) whatever the weather above (Park Service). The free Bat Flight Program runs every evening, at an amphitheatre by the Natural Entrance about five minutes’ walk from the visitor centre, from April through October by the Park Service’s bat-flight page (updated 24 March 2026) and from late May through October by its first-time visitors’ page (updated 23 February 2026); start times follow sunset, and lightning cancels it. The Park Service says the best flights are usually in August and September, when the young of the year join; Wikipedia gives July and August. Summers above ground run from 90°F to the low 100s.
What to arrange ahead. A timed-entry reservation ($1, on Recreation.gov or by telephone on 877-444-6777) is required to enter Carlsbad Cavern, and the entrance ticket itself is bought at the visitor centre: $15 for each visitor aged 16 or older, free for children, good for three days; America the Beautiful passes are honoured (Park Service fees and basic information pages, read 7 October 2026). Cavern entry runs from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; the last elevator out is at 4:45 p.m., and hikers must be walking out by 2:30. The Park Service’s accessibility page (updated 7 July 2026) says the park offers elevator service into and out of the cavern; no elevator or cavern closure notice was on the pages read on 7 October 2026, but the park’s live alerts could not be read here, so check them before setting out. Ranger-guided tours cost extra: the King’s Palace tour runs only when staffing allows, walk-up only, and a Lower Cave tour runs on Wednesdays (tour schedule, updated 13 May 2026).
Safety. The State Department’s travel advisories cover other countries, so none applies here; the hazards are the park’s own. The trails underground are wet in places and steep, and the Park Service recommends closed-toe shoes with good grip; the Natural Entrance Trail is not recommended for visitors with heart or respiratory conditions. To keep out white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that the Park Service says has killed an estimated 7 million or more bats in the United States, do not wear or bring anything that has been in another cave, and walk over the cleaning mats on the way out. Food, drinks other than plain water, tripods and strollers are not allowed in the cavern. Since a flood in August 2022, Walnut Canyon Desert Drive and the Guadalupe Ridge (visitor centre to Slaughter Canyon Trail), Rattlesnake Canyon and Juniper Ridge trails have been closed; the main road to the visitor centre is open (conditions page). Park operations depend on federal funding; check the park’s alerts before travelling.
Mark this place
Common questions
Where is Carlsbad Caverns?
Carlsbad Caverns National Park is in the Guadalupe Mountains of south-eastern New Mexico. Its entrance road leaves US Highway 62/180 at White’s City, about 20 miles south-west of the town of Carlsbad and 145 miles north-east of El Paso, Texas, according to the National Park Service.
How big is the Big Room at Carlsbad Caverns?
The Big Room in Carlsbad Cavern, New Mexico, is almost 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide and 255 feet high at its highest point, Wikipedia records. The National Park Service calls it the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America; its trail is 1.25 miles long.
Do you need a reservation for Carlsbad Caverns?
Yes. Entering Carlsbad Cavern requires a timed-entry reservation, which costs $1 on Recreation.gov or by telephone, and an entrance ticket bought at the visitor centre: $15 for each visitor aged 16 or older, free for children, valid for three days (National Park Service, read 7 October 2026).
When can you see the bats leave Carlsbad Caverns?
The National Park Service runs a free Bat Flight Program at dusk by the cavern’s Natural Entrance in New Mexico every evening in season: April through October by its bat-flight page, late May through October by its first-time visitors’ page. It says the biggest flights are usually in August and September.
Can you take photos of the bat flight at Carlsbad Caverns?
No. The National Park Service does not allow electronic devices of any kind, cameras and mobile phones included, at the Bat Flight Program at Carlsbad Caverns, because light and sound disturb the Brazilian free-tailed bats. Filming needs a special use permit requested at least two weeks ahead.
Is there an elevator at Carlsbad Caverns?
Yes. The visitor centre at Carlsbad Caverns has elevators down to the Underground Rest Area by the Big Room, about 750 feet below; the last elevator out leaves at 4:45 p.m. The National Park Service said in July 2026 that it offers elevator service in and out; check its alerts before travelling. Visitors may also walk in by the Natural Entrance Trail.
How were Carlsbad Caverns formed?
Carlsbad Caverns, in the Guadalupe Mountains of New Mexico, were dissolved upwards through the limestone of a buried reef about 250 million years old by sulfuric acid, formed where hydrogen sulfide from petroleum deposits below met oxygen in the groundwater, Wikipedia records. The gypsum in the cave is a by-product of that reaction.
What is Lechuguilla Cave?
Lechuguilla Cave is a cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico, entered by cavers in 1986, with more than 120 miles of passage mapped to a depth of 1,600 feet, Wikipedia records. It is closed to the public; only permitted scientific expeditions go in.