The Story
In 1881 brothers Tom and Jesse Bingham followed a whistling sound to a small hole; the wind rushing out reportedly knocked Tom's hat off — the "breathing" that gave the cave its name. In 1890 the developers hired 16-year-old Alvin McDonald, who mapped miles of passages by candlelight before dying of typhoid at 20 in 1893. On January 9, 1903, Theodore Roosevelt made Wind Cave the seventh national park — the first cave in the world to receive the status. To the Lakota the entrance is Washun Niya, a sacred site in their emergence story.
Surprising Facts
→ It's the first cave anywhere to become a national park (1903), decades before Carlsbad Caverns.
→ About 95% of the world's known boxwork formations are inside Wind Cave.
→ The cave "breathes" — air rushes in or out of the entrance with barometric pressure, which is how it was found.