Mitchell Caverns

One of the most popular attractions inside the Mojave National Preserve are the Mitchell Caverns.  Since 1934, when Jack Mitchell first began giving tours, these wondrous limestone caves have drawn thousands of fascinated visitors to this area.  The marvelous examples of stalactites, stalagmites, columns and curtains found inside these caves are a sight everyone should see and we highly recommend that you take the Caverns Tour!  We have done so many times and find it amazing each time!

Getting to the Caverns is easy for any Vehicle Class and there are many things to see and do in the area including two hikes that start near the Visitor's Center.

Although Mitchell Caverns is located well within the boundaries of the Mojave National Preserve, it is technically not part of the Preserve.  Its official title is the Mitchell Caverns Natural Preserve and it is part of the Providence Mountains State Recreation Area.  For those who visit the Caverns, however, it makes little difference which agency is watching over this precious resource as long as they preserve it and keep it open for future generations to enjoy.

Getting There

Taking the Caverns Tour

The main attraction of this area is, of course, the caverns themselves and the guided tours through them are spectacular and very popular.  Each tour takes about 1.5 hours with almost one hour spent in the caverns and each tour is limited to 25 guests.  So, if you plan to visit on a holiday weekend or during their busy times (spring and fall), we strongly recommend that you make reservations (see Contact Info below).  Another option is to arrive at the caverns without reservations (on one of their less busy days), purchase tickets for a tour that starts several hours later and take one or both of the hikes that start near the Visitor's Center.  We have done this before and it is a great way to spend your time while waiting for the tour to begin.  If you arrive and can join a tour that is starting right away, then take the tour first and do your hiking afterwards.

As of 2005, admission was $4 for adults and $2 for children under the age of 16.  There are three tours a day on the weekends from Labor Day through Memorial Day.  On weekdays and weekends after Memorial Day, tours run only once a day.  Check their website for current prices and tour times (see Contact Info below).

Dressing appropriately is important when you visit the Caverns.  The Visitor's Center is located at about 4,300 feet (1,300 m) at the foot of the jagged Providence Mountains.  In the hotter months you can escape the heat of the desert floor by coming up to the cooler air at the higher elevation and, better still, enjoy the cool, constant temperature of 65°F (18°C) inside the caverns.  Of course the same temperature change is true in the winter months so be prepared with a heavier coat or jacket than you would normally wear on the desert floor.

The tour starts with a short hike (about a 0.7 mile or 1.1 km) from the Visitor's Center to the entrance of the first cavern [see picture].  The trail is easy for everyone and is on level ground with good footing.  Your tour guide is one of the park rangers who will keep you entertained with stories and information along the way. 

After walking the trail for a short distance, it will turn to the right and, if you look across the valley, you'll see the cavern where you will enter [see picture].  The tour actually takes you through two of the three caverns.  Named by Jack Mitchell, the first cavern is El Pakiva and the second is Tecopa.  For more information about Jack Mitchell, see the History section below.  Once at the entrance of El Pakiva, the guide unlocks the metal grate and everyone walks into the dark cavern.  Then the lights are turned on and WOW!

Your guide will tell you that, unlike many caverns that have only a few cavern-type features, Mitchell Caverns is more diverse and has many different types of cavern features.  See the Geology section below for more information about these features.   The trail takes you through the first cavern and winds around the various features.  Lighting is used to highlight these various features and it is quite spectacular for someone that has never seen caverns before.

Two-thirds of the way through the tour, everyone goes through a set of plastic doors that act as an air lock between the two caverns.  Because this transition from one cavern to the other was man-made, the air lock was built to keep air from freely flowing between the two caverns.  Geologists do not fully understand the effects of air movement on cave systems and hope to not interrupt what Mother Nature might be working on. 

The second cavern has more great cavern features to enjoy and the tour ends in a large section of the cavern that looks more like a hollowed-out underground gold mine than the catacomb-like layout of the first cavern.  A climb up another stairway takes you back out to the surface [see picture].

History

Jack Mitchell, the man for whom the caverns are named, had a successful painting and decorating business in Los Angeles in the 1920's.  During this time, Jack and his wife, Ida, began caring for an elderly blind man that lived on their street.  This man gave Jack the claim to a mine in Arizona and, shortly thereafter, passed away.  Jack was now the owner of a mine called the Evahom Mine ("Mohave" spelled backwards) that was one of the many mines north of Kingman, Arizona.

The Mitchell's gathered together as much of of their own money as possible and started up their operation at the Evahom.  They knew little about mining and almost went broke after hiring a crew of miners.  Jack and another miner (that held on and worked for free) finally did reach pay dirt when they struck a vein of high grade silver and lead.  Jack's gamble had paid off and money began filling up his pockets.

Jack made many trips on old Highway 66 between Kingman and Los Angeles and would often stop at the small town of Essex (located about 45 miles or 72 km west of Needles).  During one of his overnight stays there, he heard about some caverns on the east side of the distant Providence Mountains.  Jack was intrigued by the stories of these caverns and the mystery of what might be found inside them, so he talked a resident of Essex into taking him out there on horseback (the best way to travel since there was no road).

Because there was a small, abandoned mining operation close to the caverns, Jack filed four claims around the area that included the caverns in 1929.  He later bought the property and moved in.  At the time, the caverns were known as either the Crystal Caves or the Providence Caves.  Jack decided to give the group of caverns his own name, Mitchell's Caverns, and give each of the three caverns their own individual name, too.  One was "El Pakiva" meaning Devil's House, another was "Tecopa" after one of the last chiefs of the Shoshone Indian Tribe and the other was "Winding Stair" because of its spooky, dangerous and deep vertical drop that spiraled down for hundreds of feet.

This ad appeared in a 1938  issue of Desert Magazine.

One of the first thinks Jack did while living at the caverns site was to prospect for silver.  The mine that was there when he arrived was the Mexican Mine and the prospect holes from this mine are still visible today if you look north of the parking lot.  The Mitchell's lived in the caverns and the tunnels of the Mexican Mine for about a a year before building their home that would last for several decades.  During that year, the industrious couple graded a road down to Highway 66, installed staircases and railings in the caverns and built stone buildings to accommodate overnight travelers.  Some of those building are still being used by the Park Service today.

By 1934, the Mitchell's had the caverns open for tours.  With the rush of people using Highway 66 and traveling to California to escape the Dust Bowl states of Oklahoma and Kansas, plenty of potential tourists were driving by the tiny Essex located just 22 miles (35 km) to the southeast.  At this time, there were all kinds of merchants selling items along Highway 66 (mainly Native American descendants selling their crafted jewelry) and Jack decided that it would be a great place to promote his tourist attraction.  He set up a stand in Essex and put up many signs along the highway to direct travelers to the caverns.  Later, Jack occupied a booth at the local County Fair (the San Bernardino Orange Show) and other area events promoting the caverns.  Jack soon became known for his promotion of tourism for the Eastern Mojave Desert in general.

For the next two decades, the Mitchell's guided and hosted many curious visitors through the two easy caverns, the El Pakiva and the Tecopa, by candlelight.  They hoped to one day dig a tunnel between these two caverns so that one consecutive loop tour could be given.

During the first year of living at the caverns, Jack boldly explored the Winding Stair cavern by lowering himself down on a chair attached to a rope.  Although the chair would constantly turn during the descent causing Jack to lose his sense of direction, he successfully explored most of this treacherous cavern.  Since then, experienced cave explorers have extensively mapped this cavern in 3D and have measure it at a total depth of 325 feet (100 m), with the first plunge being 100 feet (30 m).  Today, the Winding Stair cavern is used for training by rescue teams of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and the N.P.S. Park Service.  The entrance to Winding Stair is two miles (3.2 km) south of the Visitor's Center and is closed by a locked iron grate. The road to the entrance of the cavern is also behind a locked gate.

Mitchell Caverns, like many a ghost town or gold mine of the Old West, has its share of colorful stories.  One such story tells of how Jack was once too tired to give a group of guests a tour, so he told them to go into the second cavern, look for some candles to light and take a walk into the caverns by themselves.  The guests came back extremely angry.  Grabbing what they thought were candles, the guests actually grabbed and lit sticks of dynamite!  Jack laughed them off and told them that they mistakenly gone into the first cavern which was closed to touring because he was doing some excavation work.

In addition to being daring, Jack was also quite the story teller.  He enjoyed entertaining his guests with tall tales of ghosts, hidden treasures and bottomless pits.   One of his stories tells of how his own bull dog almost met with an untimely death.  The story goes that one day Jack was testing an old box of dynamite to see if was still good.  He lit one of the sticks and threw it away only to have his dog bring it back to him!  The dog, of course, thought they were playing a game of fetch and retrieved the "stick".  Thinking quickly, Jack threw another object away from the dog, causing the dog to drop the "stick" and go after the new object.  Seconds later, the dynamite exploded.  Jack said that the dog was very gun shy after that.

Jack often entertained school children who came to the caverns on field trips from various communities.  He loved to take them on tours and tell them more tall tales.  Over the years, Jack had collected many animals from the area so the children's tour also included showing them the small "zoo" he kept.  His zoo included badgers, foxes, coyotes and eagles. 

By 1954, Jack was reaching retirement age and the Mitchell's began negotiating with the California State Park System for them to turn the caverns into a park and take over the tours.  The Park System was already planning to develop a park in the Mojave Desert area and they were looking for attractions.  Sadly, before the negotiations were completed,  Jack was killed in a freak automobile accident at the caverns that same year.  The State and the Mitchell family soon came to terms and the State created the Providence Mountains Stat Recreation Area.  They also dug the connecting tunnel between the El Pakiva and Tecopa caverns as Jack had always wanted. 

In the middle 1990's, the State Park system allowed Hollywood director Oliver Stone to use the caverns in a scene for the movie The Doors staring Val Kilmer.  The scene depicted Kilmer, playing rock star Jim Morrison, going through a hallucinogenic episode while looking at Indian cave drawings.  The scene was filmed in the second cavern, the Tecopa, close to the exit of the current tour.  The director wanted to make drawings on the walls of the cavern and insisted that they were going to use paint that could easily be washed off.  After the movie entourage left, the paint wasn't easy to wash off and, in fact, the drawings had to be ground off the rock.  The State Park System fined the movie company a large sum of money and the caverns have not been used in a Hollywood film since.

Jack and Ida Mitchell lived at this site from 1930 until Jack's death in 1954.  Today, the Mitchell's legacy lives on as thousands of visitors are drawn to their Caverns each year making it one of the biggest attractions in the Preserve. 

Geology

Mitchell Caverns are actually limestone caves and there is a distinct difference between a cavern and a cave. The process of creating these caves began, roughly, between 10 and 20 million years ago when the floor of an ancient ocean, heavy with sedimentary limestone deposits, was uplifted above the ocean to create land.  This sea floor continued being uplifted as it was being squeezed and crumpled to form a mountain range.  At the top of this mountain range was a thick rainforest and, over thousands of years, rainwater percolated through the decaying forest plant material, absorbing carbon dioxide along the way and becoming acidic. 

Cycles of wet and dry years went on for about 10 million years and as the carbon-rich, acidic water flowed through the limestone, a chemical reaction took place that slowly dissolved the limestone and created a cave.  During the wet years, the acidic water filled the caves and slowly carved them out by chemical erosion.  During the dry years, the water in the caves would slowly evaporate and the various limestone formations would dry, solidify and become brittle.  These are the dynamics of cave building.

Once a new cave has been formed, the acidic water continues to percolate through and, as it drips from the ceiling, minerals that were originally in the water, such as magnesium and calcium, solidify.  Over a very long period of time, increasing amounts of these minerals are deposited and form an icicle-like deposit known as a stalactite .  As the water continues to drip, and over an even longer period of time, the minerals that didn't get deposited initially drip from these stalactites and form an upside-down, icicle-like deposit called a stalagmite And, as even more time goes by and these stalactites and stalagmites grow towards each other, they eventually meet creating a column .  Without knowing how a column is formed, it is easy believe the illusion that they are holding up the cave's ceiling. 

Stalactites and stalagmites are the most common features found in a limestone cave, and Mitchell Caverns has plenty of them, but these caverns also have cave curtains and the more rare cave shield .

For a while, it was thought that the Mitchell Caverns were no longer "living" because it seemed that the stalactites and stalagmites were no longer growing.  However, when the desert experiences very rainy years, that the carbon-rich water still flows through to the caves and it seems that some of the stalactites are growing.  It will take many years of observation to determine if the caverns are still "alive".

Contact Info

For more information about Mitchell Caverns, go to the State Parks website at:  http://www.parks.ca.gov/default.asp?page_id=615. 
For cavern tour reservations or other information, call the Visitor's Center at (760) 928-2586.

Copyright (c) 2007, Cliff & Ilene Bandringa - BackRoadsWest.COM

Editor's note: This article and the accompanying photos and map were provided by backroadswest.com, a company that is creating some outstanding e-guides to the American desert lands. For more information, visit their website at www.backroadswest.com.