Hi, kids.

My name is Jim.

Welcome to Bull Shoals Caverns in Bull Shoals, Arkansas.

(orchestra music) Today we're going to take you down and into the cavern where I'm going to show you what they call formations and a few other things.

All right.

Now, as we've entered the cave, we have entered almost a completely different world.

This cave remains a constant 59 degrees.

That means if we come in the cave in the middle of summer when it's 95 degrees out, it's still only 59 degrees in the cave.

Also, if we come in the cave at Christmas time, when there's snow out there on the ground, it is still 59 degrees.

And we can actually get warm by coming into the cavern.

The cave itself is a very, very old cave.

It might be as much as 350 million years old.

I did say 350 million years old.

It is what we call a tunnel cave.

It basically at one point was an underground stream or underground river.

And when the underground stream or river were coming through the ground, it would dissolve away all the dirt and the sandstone that were around it.

And that's what created the cave those many, many, many years ago.

Believe it or not, we actually have growing rocks in the cave.

The growing rocks we have in the cave are all called formations.

Now, how they form determines a little bit more precisely what we actually call the formations.

We're going to start out with some of the basic formations right here.

The first one we're going to talk about is located right up in this area right here.

This area here is something called Flowstone.

It's basically a rock river coming down the wall.

Now, you can't really see it, but there is moisture or water coming down the wall.

That moisture or water evaporate and then they leave something called calcite behind.

So when you see something that looks like a rock waterfall, this is called, again, flowstone.

And those things right up there, they look a little bit like icicles.

They, in fact, are called, here come the big words, They, in fact, are what we call icicle stalactites, or just plain old stalactite.

Okay.

They grow from the ceiling and they grow down.

They grow just the way an icicle would grow.

Now, sometimes the stalactite, the ones that are right here, they drip water.

Now, when they drip water, the drop will land on the floor or a ledge.

And then we have this big old thing right here.

This thing is called a stalagmite.

Okay, so from the ceiling, they're called stalactites from the floor or the ground, they are called stalagmites.

Now, sometimes they just keep right on growing.

And if they were to grow and finally meet up with one another, well, then we've got another formation altogether and we can take a look at that other formation right behind me, right up in this area.

And that is referred to as a column.

Okay.

Now, right up here, we have more stalactites, but if you notice, these stalactites look a little bit different.

Instead of water coming down around the formation, just like an icicle, here, water has come off to the side.

So the formation itself is growing sideways and thin.

These would probably be about the fastest growing formation we have in the cave.

We have many names for these.

We have nicknamed them elf ears here, but we could also call it cave bacon, cave ribbon.

And I'm sure there's other names that we haven't even thought about yet.

Now, here in Bull Shoals Caverns, one of the things that we are the most proud of is that we have almost all of the major formations that you can find in any cave throughout the United States.

The most unique formation we have can be found right up here.

This is what we call box work.

B O X W O R K, one word.

Boxwork.

We were only the second cave in the United States to discover it, the first caves being the Wind Caverns which are out in South Dakota.

Ok kids, that concludes our little tour through Bull Shoals Caverns.

Now what do you want to remember throughout the millions and millions and millions of years of this cave took the form, it really just boils down to two words.

And those two words were water and erosion, and it's as simple as that.

So thank you.

Thank you very much for taking your tour through Bull Shoals Caverns.