White's City + Carlsbad Caverns
On our recent Roswell road trip—after our short hike through Bottomless Lakes State Park—we headed to Carlsbad Caverns. We planned to spend the entire day there, exploring the cave until it was time to watch the bat flight. But before we even got to the cave, we stopped at White's City, located four miles east of Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
White's City was established as a campsite in the early 1900s, and over the years grew to include a Pueblo Motel, drug and grocery store, museum, chair lift ride to the top of Walnut Canyon, theater, water park, arcade, gift shop, saloon and other touristy attractions. Unfortunately White's City's heyday appears to be over—aside from an RV park, gift shop, (terrible) restrooms and a desolate restaurant, not much else appeared open or inhabited.
After extreme build-up in the form of what seemed like hundreds of signs along the highway advertising the many attributes of White's City, the actual destination was a bit of a let down. But, like a lot of roadside attractions today, if you look hard enough you can still catch glimpses of its glory days via its signage, spacious—albeit dusty—gift shop, and old-timey Wild West-theme.
After squishing some pennies and buying a dusty floaty pen (depicting the bat flight!), we headed to the main attraction. Carlsbad Cave National Monument was established in 1923, but the limestone cavern is 250 to 280 million years old. We took the self-guided tour down through the natural entrance, a 1.25 mile hike with a descent of 750 feet. I definitely recommend the natural entrance trail if you're comfortable walking distances, but there's also an elevator that will deposit you right into the Big Room.
All along the trail I kept oohing and ahhing over the formations—nature is really, really nuts—and I couldn't possibly imagine how it could get any better. But when we finally made it to the Big Room, I realized why it was the star—it's breathtaking. The Big Room trail is another 1.25 miles, but we were forced to take the shortcut by rangers who told us politely that we were overstaying our welcome (the last elevator up was at 4:30pm, but they started putting the pressure on us around 4pm).
But even after the kitsch of White's City and the grandeur of the cavern, the bat flight still managed to impress. Photos and videos are not allowed during the flight, and it's nice (in addition to being helpful for the bats) to actually experience something nowadays without the pressure of documenting it in just the right way. I think this about most things, but the bat flight really needs to be experienced—there are videos, but they can't possibly capture the sights, sounds, smells and feelings of sitting beneath thousands and thousands of flying bats. I didn't know there were that many bats in the world, let alone in one cavern—we watched for an hour until it was too dark to see, but the ranger said the flight can last from two to four hours.