With Fixed Elevators, Tours Resume at South Dakota Cave

With its elevators fixed after a 19-month shutdown, Wind Cave National Park in southwestern South Dakota had been set to resume limited tours on March 27, the Rapid City Journal reports. Due to pandemic precautions, visitors are required to wear masks and social distance, and initial tours are only through the entrance to an elevator that takes visitors 19 stories below ground to the caverns. A walk-in entrance is closed so visitors do not disturb hibernating bats. Tours were canceled in June 2019 after issues with the elevators were discovered. They were repaired in December 2020, “but by then, the world had changed,” the source observes.