Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico

Jim White

Jim White

Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New MexicoВ В В В В В  The Story of its Early Explorations, as told by Jim White

HOW JIM FOUND THE CAVERNS

Bats!… millions of black little mammals drifting along the horizon and seeming to fuse into the hazy clouds of a New Mexico sunset! That was the spectacle which led Jim White, back at the turn of the century, to become interested in the colossal phenomenon designated by Act of Congress as Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

If you could ask him about it today, Jim’s eyes would probably turn inward as he’d muse and remember. “I thought it was a volcano—but then I’d never seen one. For that matter, I’d never seen bats fly. I had seen plenty of prairie whirlwinds during my life on the range, but this thing didn’t move. It seemed to stay in one spot near the ground—but the top kept spinning upward. I watched maybe a half-an-hour, and being about as curious as the next fellow, I started toward the place”.

Jim White, native of Mason County, Texas, grew up ranching … surrounded by the cattle-business, without even a grammar school education. Jim would have preferred bustin’ broncos to books and blackboards even if there had been a little log schoolhouse on his native soil. So it was an experienced ten-year-old range-rider who teamed up with John and Dan Lucas of the X-X-X Ranch in New Mexico, three miles or so from the entrance to the cave. Jim White spent eight or ten years on the range surrounding Lucas’ Ranchhouse, and like the other rangemen, had known of “the bat cave”, but he had felt no impelling urge to see what was hiding in its darkness.

Then came the day of the bat-flight. Crawling through the rocks and brush, Jim White approached the spot from which the bats seemed literally to boil. The incredulous young range-rider made a feeble guess about the number of bats—could think no further than millions—but realized that any hole with capacity for that many bats must be a whale of a big affair. Creeping still closer, Jim finally lay on the brink of the chasm and looked down … into awesome, impenetrable blackness.

Torn between awe and curiosity, Jim did the natural thing for a man familiar with desert ranges.

“I piled up some dead cactus and built a bonfire. When it was burning good, I took a flaming stalk and pushed it off into the hole. Down, down, down it went until the flame went out—and I still watched until the embers sprinkled on the rocks below. Seemed the thing wouldn’t ever stop, but later it measured about thirty or forty feet from where I dropped the fire down to that faraway bottom. I kicked the remainder of the fire into the hole and watched it fall. The bats seemed to be scared, and for several minutes none flew out. Soon as the embers died, though, they boiled up again. I watched another hour or so, then went back to camp.”

The fence-building crew, camped in the vicinity at the time, heard not a word from their companion about his observation.

JIM EXPLORES FARTHER

Jim White kept his counsel, waited a couple of days for the opportunity, then gathered together several coils of rope, a kerosene lantern, some wire and a hand-axe.

“I got back to the cave about mid-afternoon. You know the opening faces West, and the sun was in the right place to shine down into it. There was enough light so I could see the bottom of the shaft. Off to the right I could see the opening of a huge tunnel, and my imagination started running ahead of me. Where would that tunnel lead? I made up my mind to find out.”

Busy with the hand-axe, Jim cut sticks of wood from the shrubs nearby, accumulating a sizeable pile. Next, he picked up the rope and the wire … and with his newly-cut sticks for steps, Jim White’s rope-ladder-to-adventure was soon lowered into the entrance of the cave. Cautious rung-by-rung descent led the probing cowboy down into blackness until his feet touched something solid. Lighting his lantern, he discovered himself on a narrow ledge—almost at the end of h