Pluto's Cave
| Pluto's Cave | |
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Entrance to the cave
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 Location of cave in California
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| Location | Siskiyou County, California, United States |
| Coordinates | 41°34′05″N 122°16′57″W / 41.568012°N 122.282632°W |
| Length | 0.5 to 1 mile (0.80 to 1.61 km) |
| Discovery | 1863 |
| Geology | Lava tube |
Pluto's Cave (or Pluto Cave) is a partially collapsed lava tube on the northern outskirts of Mount Shasta. Its main entrance is located close to the 99-97 Cutoff c. 12 miles (19 km) North-east of Weed and c. 14 miles (23 km) East-southeast of Grenada. The tube is roughly 190,000 years old, which is quite old for a lava tube, as they normally collapse quickly (in geological terms), having ceilings only a few metres thick. However, Pluto's Cave is located in a semi-arid climate, where erosion is restricted, which contributes to its survival.
The cave was discovered in the spring of 1863 by Nelson Cash, who came upon it while looking for stray cattle. It was further explored in April 1863, and named "Pluto's Cave" after Pluto, the Greek God of the underworld.
William Henry Brewer assisted by Clarence King on a field trip for the California Division of Mines and Geology (predecessor of today's California Geological Survey), visited the cave on October 10, 1863. Brewer writes about it a month later on November 11:
October 10 in the morning we went to visit a cave about three-quarters of a mile distant, just discovered, and of which extraordinary stories were told. It was, indeed, quite a curiosity. It is called Pluto’s Cave. The surface of the country is a gentle lava slope, very rocky, with but little soil and with stunted cedars and bushes, the lava rising into innumerable hummocks a few feet high. Under this the cave extends. It looks as if the surface of the great lava flow had cooled, but that the crust had broken somewhere lower down and a long stream of the fluid had run out, leaving a long, empty channel or gallery. The roof of this gallery is beautifully arched—in places it is at least fifty feet high and as many broad. The bottom is of broken blocks of lava, and the sides are occasionally ornamented with fantastic shapes of stone, where the melted or viscous fluid has oozed through cracks, sometimes in a thick, black stream, like tar, then cooled, in others like froth on the surface of the molten mass—but all now cool enough, hard, rough, black rock. We went in near a mile, to the end, or at least to where the fallen fragments blocked up the way. Multitudes of bats lived in it, even to the very end. Near the entrance the roof had broken in in several places, and there were many skulls of mountain sheep that had got in and perished. These are the chamois of the Rocky Mountains and Sierra. They are nearer a goat than sheep, and have enormous horns, hence some hunters call them the "big horn." On one of these skulls the horns were 14 1/2 inches in circumference at the base and 33 inches between the tips.
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Wikipedia