South Dakota’s Wind Cave is now the world’s sixth longest

HOT SPRINGS — Wind Cave in South Dakota’s Black Hills is now the sixth longest cave in the world as explorers have discovered new passageways, bringing the total length to 167 miles.

The addition of these new passageways moves Wind Cave up one spot, from seventh to sixth, on the list of the planet’s longest caves. Wind Cave surpassed the Optymistychna Cave near Korolivka, Ukraine, which is nearly 165 miles in length.

“Wind Cave is a difficult cave to explore and doesn’t always allow us to discover areas outside of its currently mapped boundaries,” said Marc Ohms, physical scientist for Wind Cave National Park. “But we’ve added a little bit here, and a little bit there, reaching 167 miles earlier this spring.”

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When the National Park Service began managing Wind Cave in 1903, less than 10 miles of the cave were known. That number increased to 100 in 2001 and 150 in 2019. In April 2022, the Fall River County Herald-Star first reported Wind Cave’s milestone of 160 miles of mapped passageways.

Ohms said that park staff, the Paha Sapa Grotto and the Colorado Grotto (both chapters of the National Speleological Society), as well as other volunteer cavers have been exploring the depths of Wind Cave, and have discovered some of the new sections.

Cavers continue to explore an area known as the “Western Fringe,” south and west of the park’s visitor center. Ohms said it takes cavers approximately six hours to reach the Western Fringe, and there is a camp set up there so explorers can spend three to four days researching in that area before heading back.

In 2022, Ohms said that cave explorers were only 800 feet away from connecting Wind Cave to another cave in the immediate vicinity, the Persistence Cave, which Ohms discovered himself in 2004.

“We are still 800 feet away today … nothing has changed there,” Ohms said.

Even though Wind Cave tours are currently suspended for the general public due to an elevator replacement project, cave exploration and research will continue during the closure. The surface of Wind Cave National Park remains open.

Air pressure studies have indicated that only 5-10% of Wind Cave is currently mapped, leaving the possibility that the cave has hundreds of miles yet to be discovered.

Another Black Hills cave, Jewel Cave, is the world’s fifth longest with about 220 miles of known passageways.