Caverns of western New York run dark, deep

September 11, 2011|By Jane Roy Brown, Globe Correspondent

Howe Caverns (above) and Secret Caverns are about a mile apart in western… (PHOTOS BY BILL REGAN FOR…)

HOWES CAVE, N.Y. - The call of 19th-century hucksters beckoning to tourists still echoes in these hills where Howe Caverns and Secret Caverns yawn below green pastures. But despite the trail of billboards and some hokey trappings, the caverns are natural wonders. Although not physically connected, they lie within a mile of each other in this pastoral region 44 miles west of Albany. Both have extraordinary water features. And both were discovered by cows.

This is no coincidence. In the humid summers of central New York, dairy cows, long the economic mainstay of the region, naturally roam their pastures seeking relief from the heat. Caves, insulated by layers of soil and rock, maintain a constant, year-round temperature - in this case, between 52 and 60 degrees. Sooner or later, farmers were bound to notice cows huddled around outcrops of ledge on hot days, because the ledges were exhaling chilly air.

In the case of Lester Howe, who owned the farm adjacent to the land containing Howe’s Caverns, that day came in 1842, when he found a cow named Millicent basking in a cave breeze on his neighbor’s farm. After discovering the caverns below, Howe eventually bought the property.

On the farm containing what is now Secret Caverns, it was 1928, when a cow (Lucky) and a bull (Floyd), drawn to a cool draft flowing from an opening in the ground, crashed through the earth into a cavern 85 feet below. The farmer, afraid that the rest of his herd would meet the same fate, readily sold out to an enterprising civil engineer.

Today’s visitors face no such hazards. The entrance to Howe Caverns, 156 feet, or about 16 stories, below ground, is reached by elevator, just like descending to the lower level of a parking garage. Visitors need not fear squeezing through wormholes, either. The elevator opens to a vestibule at the base of the elevator shaft, blasted out of the earth in 1928. This high-ceilinged room is one of only a few passages in these caverns that have been enlarged for commercial tours. A brick-paved path follows the gurgling course of an underground stream for a half-mile through water-worn canyons. At the beginning of the tour, guides refer to it as the River Styx, after the one in Greek mythology that separates the world of the living from Hades, the underworld realm of the dead.