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Second Season BeginsQuietly and with little fanfare last May, Wyandotte Caves passed from state management to a privatized operation run by a Southern Indiana cave-tour company.The hasty transformation -- right before the busy summer season -- concerned state officials and placed Cave Country Adventures behind the proverbial eight ball. But this year, as the 2003 season opens at the smaller of Wyandotte's two caves-Siberts Cave, the forecast is far better than that of a year ago. "It'll be a whole different ballgame this year," said Carol Groves, Cave Country's vice president of marketing and public relations. For instance, Cave County will have time to advertise. She said they expect to exceed the 20,000 visitors per year that the state reported before Cave Country took over. Wyandotte Caves, located in the 1,200-acre Harrison-Crawford Forest, straddles the county line about 7 miles east of Leavenworth. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources' Division of Forestry bought Wyandotte in 1966 from the Rothrock family, which had been giving cave tours since 1851. State budget cuts, however, forced the department to lay off Wyandotte's 10 part-time summer workers last spring. Other year-round employees were reassigned, said Stephen Sellers, a spokesman for the natural resources department. But the agency couldn't shut down one of the nation's oldest commercial caves. Instead, Sellers said, it decided to find a vendor and reduce the months of operation. The decision involved financial and environmental considerations. With fewer months, Cave Country Adventures, which also operates Marengo Cave and Cave Country Canoe livery, could focus on the busiest tourism months, Sellers said. But federal Fish and Wildlife officials also had suggested reducing cave traffic during the hibernation of the endangered Indiana brown bat, which seeks out the caverns during the winter and early spring. A large concentration of bats is in the larger cave, known as Big Cave or the Historic Cave, which now opens May 1. The smaller Siberts Cave opened March 1st.. From the state's point of view, Cave Country Adventures did a great job last year, given that it didn't have time to create brochures and advertise, Sellers said. > Cave Country, for its part, was determined not to let a well-known and historically significant cave shut down, Groves said. Along with Marengo, the caves represent half of the four commercial caves in Indiana. Two others -- Squire Boone Caverns, in southern Harrison County; and Bluespring Caverns in Lawrence County -- will team this year to promote the four caves on a Web site -- www.indianacaves.com -- Groves said. If Wyandotte had closed, it likely would have hurt -- not helped -- everybody's business, she said. "When I think of Wyandotte, I think of history," said Groves. "It's Indiana's Mammoth Cave." |