Carlsbad Caverns National Park
The number of Wikipedia languages with an article is our measure of how widely known a site is. Counts of visitors and wishes will appear once enough people use the app.
How it came to be
The caves of south-eastern New Mexico lie within the limestone of the Capitan Reef, which formed in a Permian sea. Hydrogen sulfide combined with oxygen in the water to form sulfuric acid, which dissolved the limestone and hollowed out the caverns. The gypsum in the caves, a by-product of that reaction, is taken as evidence of the process.
In 1898 a teenager named Jim White explored the cavern with a homemade wire ladder and named many of its rooms, including the Big Room and the Kings Palace. Parts of the cave were mined for bat guano in the early 20th century. President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed it a national monument on 25 October 1923, and an act of Congress made it a national park on 14 May 1930.
In 1932 two elevators were opened to carry visitors into the cave. The Big Room, almost 1,200 m long, about 190 m wide and about 78 m high at its highest point, is the largest chamber in North America. In 1986 cavers dug through a rubble pile in the park's Lechuguilla Cave and broke through into the cave beyond, and the park was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1995.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s license. Prototype; may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).