Adventure Tour: Get the Facts

For the first time in more than a century, those who take Howe Caverns Adventure Tour can see The Great Rotunda – a silo-shaped dome with 107-foot ceilings formed in the cave before the last glacier disappeared.

Access became possible after two teams of cavers removed some 23 tons of sediment that, for many decades, had partially plugged the 12-foot long Mystery – a passage segment in the cave that leads to The Great Rotunda.

On the Adventure Tour, guests access The Great Rotunda by crawling through Mystery Passage to enter the newly re-opened portions of the cave at the northern end of the Winding Way, at the base of the Silent Chamber.

Because normal flashlights and headlamps are not powerful enough to light the top of The Great Rotunda, modern Adventure explorers see the full height of the dome through a portable one-million, candle-power beam. Those taking the 1½-hour tour are provided with attire for the Adventure including coveralls, boots, lights, helmets and gloves.

The Great Rotunda was once the farthest point reached from the original entrance of what was then known as Howe’s Cave, discovered by local farmer Lester Howe on May 22, 1842. Long before the installation of elevators in the late 1920s, Lester Howe’s torch-lit cave tours took up to five hours to reach The Great Rotunda, where he fired Roman candles high up into the circular dome in order to see the top,