WYANDOTTE CAVE

cave in Crawford County, southern Indiana, U.S., near the village of Wyandotte. With 25 mi (40 km) of passages on five levels, it is the largest of the many such caves dissolved out in the horizontally bedded Mississippian limestones that extend southward into the cave-bearing regions of Kentucky and Tennessee. The entrance is about 200 ft (60 m) above the Blue River. The cave was used by Indians and is believed to have been inhabited in prehistoric times. Outstanding features include Rothrock's Grand Cathedral (an enormous room almost 1/4 mi in circumference with a 175-ft-tall rock pile at its centre called Monument Mountain) and the Senate Chamber, an elliptical amphitheatre 145 ft long and 56 ft wide. In the centre of the chamber, a mass of fallen rock supports one of the cave's grandest spectacles, the Pillar of the Constitutiona great fluted column of white calcite, combining a stalactite and a stalagmite and over 70 ft in circumference. The cave also contains many fine examples of helictites (irregular stalactites). The temperature within is a constant 53 F (about 12 C). Little Wyandotte Cave is nearby, and Marengo Cave is 20 mi (32 km) south.