Wisconsin Life

The Ledge View Nature Center offers beautiful hiking trails, educational opportunities, and year-round activities to experience the natural world, above and below ground. The most popular features at the park are the caves and Naturalist Supervisor Louise Marum knows their origins.

speaking in Australian accent

We have a dolomite limestone here. So, during the Silurian Period, there was a warm tropical ocean and a coral reef. It was an accumulation of coral sediment over millions of years that formed our dolomite limestone. Dolomite is a carbonate rock. And rainwater is acidic. So very slowly, over time, that rock will be dissolved away. So, water seeps down through cracks in the rocks and over possibly up to a million years, it dissolved the rock away. Wow, and so, what might we expect to see during today's tours? Well, our caves here at Ledge View are-- We like to call them wild caves. There's no walkways. So if you want the opportunity to really go caving and walk around and crawl around and, yeah, you can touch stuff. We encourage it. Now, some of those tunnels are pretty big. I can do them on my hands and knees. Others, I got to get on my belly for which is the really fun part I think. Adventure awaits for those who dare to explore the caves. We often find that when kids first go down into the caves, they're a little bit hesitant because it's dark, and it's dirty, and it's wet. And when we put dirt and water together, we get mud. Some kids are just not used to getting as dirty as you get in our caves. But we find after a while that they really get into it and that's the aspect that they say that they most enjoy when they come out. Huge spiders. She's not going to hurt. Promise. Tight tunnels and a narrow exit. Oh, that was a squeeze. Wow, that was pretty small. It may be dirty and exhausting, but most visitors say it's all worth it. I would just say getting dirty and just exploring. I really like stuff like that 'cause it's quite fun for me and exploring is quite fun sometimes. The fact that I got to learn a lot. I like reading history books. Learning about history, history's people, and how things are shaped and formed.