Carlsbad Caverns National Park


Since March 2025 most ranger guided tours at Carlsbad Caverns National Park were discontinued to accommodate staffing issues. The Trump government has fired about 1,000 park rangers in the whole country. As a result regular tours to Lower Cave, King’s Cave, and Slaughter Canyon were stopped until further notice. Currently, there is a single tour to Lower Cave or King’s Cave daily but only if enough staff is available, so it’s not possible to make a reservation.


The Carlsbad Caverns National Park contains between its boundaries more than 100 known caves. The most impressive and beautiful one of those caves is the Lechuguilla Cave. This cave is not open to the public, access is extremely restricted to protect its beauty.

All caves in the park are not exactly karst caves. A certain amount of the limestone solution depends on chemical and biochemical processes connected with sulphurous thermal springs. The sulphur, fed by sulphur loving bacteria, is converted into sulphurous acid, which dissolves the limestone. The sulphur is also the reason for the various gypsum-based speleothems, as gypsum is CaSO4, ad thus a product of the chemical reaction between limestone and sulphur. The ratio between karst processes and biochemical hypogene solution varies from cave to cave in the park. In Carlsbad Cavern, which is rather close to the surface, most of the cavern is formed by karst processes and there are little gypsum speleothems.