Blanchard Springs Caverns

These spectacular living caverns in the Ozark National Forest were opened to the public in 1973. The underground chambers contain massive formations millions of years old.

Blanchard Springs Caverns lies beneath the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest in Stone County, fifteen miles northwest of Mountain View, Arkansas. It is the only tourist cave owned by the United States Forest Service and the only federally owned show cave outside the National Park System. The cavern takes its name from John H. Blanchard, a Kentucky native who left his family's plantation to fight for the Confederacy, enlisting in the Kentucky Volunteers in 1861. Wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga, Blanchard sought peace after the war by homesteading 160 acres in the tranquil Ozarks, where he built a gristmill powered by the falling spring that now bears his name. He served two terms as Stone County treasurer and died in 1914 at age seventy-four.

The caverns were formed over 350 to 500 million years as limestone created from fossilized sea creatures was uplifted to form the Ozark Plateau approximately 300 million years ago. Acidic rainfall slowly carved the underground passages, and calcium carbonate deposits created the spectacular speleothems — stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, and columns — that fill the chambers today. The first documented exploration occurred in 1934 by Civilian Conservation Corps planner Willard Hadley, though archaeological evidence — cane and wooden torch remains dated between AD 215 and 1155 — proves that Native Americans accessed the cave centuries earlier. Professional exploration began in 1960 when Hugh Shell and Hail Bryant entered the system, and in 1971 scuba divers explored the spring entrance, covering 4,000 feet of passages and mapping five air-filled caverns. The Dripstone Trail opened to the public in 1973, descending 216 feet by elevator into the decorated upper level. The Discovery Trail opened in 1977, taking visitors 366 feet underground via 686 stairs through the cave's most dramatic chambers, including the Cathedral Room — over 1,000 feet long with a six-story stone column.

The Discovery Trail also passes through the Ghost Room, a small but elaborately decorated chamber in the uppermost level named for its massive white flowstone formations that loom like spectral figures in the dim lighting. It is in this room and in the deeper passages that tour guides and visitors have reported experiences that go beyond the expected sensory effects of being hundreds of feet underground. Phantom voices have been heard echoing through chambers where no other tour groups are present, with guides confirming that the sounds cannot be attributed to acoustics carrying from other parts of the cave. Visitors have described an overwhelming sensation of being watched in the deepest sections, particularly in the areas near the underground stream where the constant temperature holds at fifty-eight degrees and humidity approaches one hundred percent. A few visitors have photographed unexplained mists in the deepest passages — translucent forms that appear in images but were not visible to the naked eye at the time of the photograph.

The cavern's paranormal reputation is subtle compared to Arkansas's more famous haunted sites, and the Forest Service does not promote or acknowledge any supernatural element. Some attribute the phenomena to the cave's extreme sensory environment — the absolute darkness beyond the trail lights, the constant dripping water, the disorienting acoustics that can make a whisper carry hundreds of feet. Others point to the centuries of human presence deep underground, from the Native Americans who explored by torchlight nearly two thousand years ago to the Civil War veteran who made his life above the cave's entrance. The caverns closed in 2020 for repairs and COVID-19 restrictions, reopened in August 2022, and as of December 2025 are in the process of being designated an Arkansas State Park.