THE GROWING WEST.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 145, 21 June 1934, Page 5

THE GROWING WEST.

UPPER RIO GRANDE.

EDDY BECOMES CARLSBAD.

"PEP" AND CAVERN WONDERS

(By HOWARD VESTCENT O'BRIEN.)

CARLSBAD, New Mexico, May 12. It is unsettling to plunge abruptly through the Cimarron Ptiss into the Hispanic civilisation of the upper Rio Grande. It is even more unsettling to bump southward across desert and grazing land and the historic hills of Billy the Kid, and find one's self back in a gogetting present.

There are few Indians. "Mexicans" arc less numerous. Negroes appear. The adobe houses give place to wooden structures, typical uf the Middle West. The fields turn green. After torturing miles of ungraded, unsurfaced highway, without even a gas station, one rolls on concrete into grass plots and cement ! sidewalks—one of the most amazing towns in all this amazing country. Christened "Eddy" by its founders, it discovered that it possessed mineral springs of the same analysis as the famous springs in Bohemia, and it changed its name to Carlsbad. It harnessed the Pecos River and irrigated the countryside. In the midst of an arid and dusty plain, it seethes with ambition and the spirit of progress. Its population grows from hour to hour. Miers Johnson, the genial Texas lumberman, v, ho built the leading hotel and set a Spanish style for the town's newer architecture, drove me down a residence street pointing out the new houses. Excluding the antiques, built more than i three vears ago, he counted 16 in one block. J A Town of Miracles. I have met many chamber of commerce secretaries, but Victor Minter is ns unique as his town. Xo Franciscan friar, burning with holy zeal to convert the heathen, could exhibit more ardour! than he does iu expounding the merits I

of Carlsbad. It is the focus of a region ■ in which there have been miracles, and it awaits, with serene confidence, further miracles to come. Oil was discovered where the geologists insisted 110 , oil could be. The mineral springs await only capital for a proper development. A deposit of potash has been discovered—tlie only one in America-—and ■ mines and refineries are in prosperous operation. Cotton prices are up. A new , | movie house is projected, and a federal ' building. Buyers await anyone who will build houses. Remarkable prehistoric remains have been unearthed nearby. And si few miles away is one of tlie world's outstanding marvels, the Carls-' bad Caverns. J Everyone said I must see the eaves J of Carlsbad —they were "wonderful," "marvellous" and what not. But I had , seen caves, and I wasn't especially keen to see another one. However, I came, I saw—and I have been conquered! I shall not try to describe what I saw. I couldn't if I used all the adjectives of awe and immensity. These caverns are simply not to be rendered in language. They arc of comparatively recent discovery. It was known, for a long- time, ! that every night during the summer a{ smoke-like cloud of bats rose from a hole in the ground, but it was not until a young cowboy named Jim White explored tlie caverns that the truth was , known. His courage can be appreciated only by one who has seen where he J

went. At first no one believed his stories. Then, slowly, the news of what he had found seeped to the outer world. Scientific expeditions were organised, and ! eventually the place was taken over by j the Government and made a national j park. | Cure for Egotists. | The eaves themselves, with their J immensity and limitless variety of "f formation, defy all attempts at descrip- I tion. As Hamlin Garland once said, no I egotist could visit them and remain an egotist. A single one of the chambers, lying 750 ft below the entrance, is nearly a mile in length. Its acoustics are far superior to those of any man-made structure. Hardly less worthy of comment is the work of Superintendent Thomas Boles, ; •who fitted the frame to Nature's picture. ' From the entrance, to the moment when oue steps from a high-speed electric

» elevator that takes one back to daylight after having walked through some six miles of underground paths, there is not a jarring note. Nature and mechanics have been superbly harmonised. I have visited many "sights" in mainlands, but I never before visited one so magnificently organised as Carlsbad caverns. Everything is in perfect taste. There are 110 coloured lights, no souvenir stands, no wise-cracking guides. Even the lunch concession, 000 ft underj ground, is in keeping with the natural dignity of the. place. And just twelve minutes after the first of the 200 visitors had arrived, the last had received a tray of freslily-made sand--1 wiches and coffee. Never, in my wanderings, have I seen the equal of this masterpiece of Nature. It is an object lesson in balance. The eaves and the myriad shapes in them are caused by water seeping through | limestone and dissolving it. When, however, the deposit of stone blocks further seepage, the process ceases, and the cave is "dead."