A CAVE IS A PERFECT mystery: dark, dangerous, and filled with pristine evidence. The caves underneath western Virginia attest to million-year geological transformations, but they also harbor intrigue on a human scale. The discovery of these subterranean wonders in the 1800s spawned a genre of local lore and popular fiction–call it “the romance of the cave”–in which crystal caverns became theaters for passion and politics.
Many cave romances were European fantasies of ancient North America, featuring stereotyped Indians as well as mythical races like Phoenicians and lost tribes of Israel. Caves became gateways to an imagined past for a country with a very short recorded history. Meanwhile, centuries of tourism and amateur exploration have destroyed archaeological evidence that could have revealed a more realistic story of early Native American cultures.
Virginia was a hotspot for cave exploration even in colonial times. Thomas Jefferson mapped caves in the state’s Valley and Ridge province in the 1780s–and found some that had already been tagged by a teenage George Washington forty years earlier.
These finds were only a teaser for Weyer’s Cave, discovered by a fur trapper in 1804. Weyer’s was more spectacular and easier to access, especially after its owner built walkways and stairs for visitors to wander safely amid a “sublimity and grandeur…not surpassed by anything in nature.”
Most of Virginia’s more than 4,400 documented caves are hidden in the wilderness. However, once enterprising landowners realized that they could develop larger caves into tourist traps, there was a rush to capitalize on this geological wonder. A new and enduring category of roadside attraction, the “show cave”, was born. The discovery of additional sites, such as Luray Caverns in 1878, kept the fascination alive for generations of Americans.
The show cave business took off thanks to the 19th-century expansion of railroads; for instance, the Shenandoah Valley Railroad Company bought Luray Caverns in 1881. They developed package tours, built a hotel, and ran electric lights into the cave. Advertising it as a luxury vacation spot, the railroad boasted that a visitor could “spend hours wandering underground without wetting his feet.” Even during these boom times caves competed fiercely for tourist dollars, with big players like Luray and Weyer’s putting humbler neighbors out of business.