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Laurel Caverns

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Laurel Caverns
Laurel Caverns
Laurel Caverns
Laurel Caverns
Laurel Caverns
Laurel Caverns
Laurel Caverns
Laurel Caverns
Laurel Caverns
Laurel Caverns
Laurel Caverns
Laurel Caverns
Laurel Caverns
Phone:
+1 800-515-4150

Address:
200 Caverns Park Road, Farmington, PA 15437

Laurel Caverns, is the deepest cave in the northeastern United States and the largest in volume. Located in Farmington, Pennsylvania, it sits on Chestnut Ridge near Uniontown, about 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. It is a privately owned show cave with a three-hour-long guided tour penetrating 46 stories deep into the mountain interior. It is within a calcareous sandstone made up of 70% silica grains cemented together with 30% calcium carbonate and a small amount of iron oxide. The cave formed when the calcium carbonate was dissolved by groundwater allowing the silica to be washed away. This gives the cave rough walls, a sandy floor, and very few formations normally seen in the more common high calcium limestone caves. Laurel Caverns was also formed in an area of folded and fractured rock. Because of this, the entire cave is tilted thirteen degrees, resulting in many steep passageways. They tend to follow the fractures in the rock, resulting in a grid of long passageways. The cave has been known since the 18th century, and probably used by the Native Americans long before that. It was home to about 25,000 bats before the advent of white-nose syndrome. It stays at a temperature of 12°C year round. The steep slope of some passageways causes an optical illusion known as a gravity hill. The illusion of a ball rolling uphill is an illustration of this effect.
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