Cave of the Winds Mountain Park

Manitou Springs, Colorado | June 2026

Nestled inside Williams Canyon just outside of Manitou Springs, Cave of the Winds has been drawing people underground since 1881, making it one of Colorado's oldest continuously operating attractions. But the cave itself is estimated to be somewhere between four and seven million years old, formed within a limestone formation that is far older, dating back roughly 500 million years to when this entire region lay beneath an ancient sea.

Long before any official discovery, the Jicarilla Apache spoke of a sacred cave in this area, home to the Great Spirit of the Wind. The canyon carried a spiritual significance that predated any tourist map by centuries. In 1880, two young brothers named George and John Pickett were exploring Williams Canyon when they discovered the cave entrance. As the story goes, they descended by candlelight until a sudden wind roaring through the canyon blew out their candles and filled the darkness with sound. They returned the following year with a stonecutter named George Washington Snider, who began excavating passages and uncovering rooms. By February 1881, Snider was offering the first guided tours, lighting the way with torches through chambers no one had ever walked.

Today, Cave of the Winds encompasses what is known as the Manitou Grand Caverns, a system filled with stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, draperies, soda straws, and columns, each one shaped drop by microscopic drop over millions of years. The cave sits at an elevation of 7,000 feet, making it one of the highest show caves in the United States. Visitors can choose from a daytime Discovery Tour that winds through 15 electrically lit rooms along a half-mile route, or the Lantern Tour, a 90-minute journey into the unimproved Manitou Grand Caverns by candlelight alone, the same way Snider first walked these passages over 140 years ago.

There is something about descending into the mountain above a town that has long been associated with healing springs and mineral waters. Manitou Springs sits at a confluence of geological forces that push both water and wind to the surface, and the cave above it carries that same sense of the earth offering something up from within.

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