BRYSCO FEED & SEEDHwy 160 East — Salt blocks, fence wire, garden plants in season679‑3181
THE NOEL HOUSERooms by the night or week. Air cooled! Coffee on at five thirty. Ask for Junie.679‑4009
HOLLIS WELL & PUMPDrilling, pump setting, water lines. We put the line into this building in 1979.679‑2864
TURNBOW LOCKER PLANTCustom cutting & wrapping. Freezer space rented by the month.679‑2115
EARLINE'S FLOWERS & GIFTS — WEST PLAINSWire service anywhere. Wedding work our specialty.256‑7740
SIX MILE MARINEBoat & motor repair. Live bait, minnows, crawlers.679‑3320
PAULK REXALLFilm, flashcubes & sundries. We develop. Fountain in back.679‑2003
C&R ELECTRIC — LICENSEDWiring, fixtures, service poles. Hung our new cave lamps in '83.679‑2571
VESTAL & SON PAINTInterior, exterior, barn roofs. Free estimates, no job small.679‑4188
DOTHAGER TIRERecaps & road service. Open till six weekdays.679‑2299
SNODDY IMPLEMENTParts & shop work. Hay equipment on the lot now!679‑2043
HOLLISTER RIDGE CAVERN & DINING ROOM
SIX MILES SOUTH OF THEODOSIA ON U.S. 160 · OZARK COUNTY, MISSOURI
TOUR TIMES
9:00
11:12
1:52
9:22
11:34
2:14
9:44
11:56
2:36
10:06
12:18
2:58
10:28
12:40
3:20
10:50
1:08
3:42
LAST TOUR 4:04 · 70 MINUTES
ADULT $4.75 · CHILD 6–11 $2.25 UNDER 6 FREE · GROUPS OF 20, ASK!
STOPS ON YOUR TOUR:
Entrance culvert & wet steps
The Rain Room (bring your hat)
Popcorn Gallery — see the rail!
Top of the Long Stairs, 148
The Cathedral
Frozen Niagara of the Ozarks
Wedding Cake & Broken Column
Soda Straw Ceiling
Cold Pool (please, no coins)
The Bridal Chamber
Elevator lobby, 1958
A WORD ABOUT YOUR CAVE
Welcome, friends, and thank you for stopping! While you're waiting on your order, here is a little about the
cave under this floor. Folks always want to know why it is 57 degrees down there. It is 57 degrees because
57 degrees is the average air temperature of the hill on top of it, all year averaged out, and that is the
whole reason — it isn't a feature we put in, it's just what the hill reads. Humidity runs 97 to 99 percent
every day of the year, which is very hard on equipment; we have replaced the amplifier in the Cathedral
twice in six years and we have quit trying, so your guide's tour is given by voice and she will be glad to
repeat anything for you. Ask her! Now here is the thing I am proudest of. In 1983 we moved
every lamp in the cave back from the walls and re‑aimed them so no beam lands square on wet rock inside a
metre, and we dropped the Cathedral bank from 750 watts to 300. The lamps look badly aimed. They are aimed
correctly. The green is gone off the Cathedral wall and has stayed gone.
The green is called lampenflora — algae, moss and cyanobacteria that come in on shoes and on the air and grow
on any lit wet surface. It is our single biggest maintenance item, ahead of the elevator. Every fourth week
two of us go through with bleach and a brush on a rotation, and the reason there is a rotation at all is the
lighting. Lint is our second one, and it is not a joke: cotton fibre and hair off of people settles onto wet
flowstone, mats down, holds water, feeds the algae and stains for good. In January and February we are on our
hands and knees at stops 6 and 8 with tweezers and a squeeze bottle. Third, and you can see this one yourself
at stop 3: every person breathes out about 40 grams of carbon dioxide an hour, it dissolves in the water film
on the rock, and that weak acid takes calcite back off the popcorn. Look at the popcorn at chest and nose
height along the rail, then look at the same formation eight feet up. It is dulled at rail height and not
dulled above it, and it tracks how many people we run and nothing else. Please don't touch, and please do look.
A few more answers, since I have the room. Tours leave 22 minutes apart. That interval is not the length of
the tour — it is set by the narrowest place two groups can pass, which is a 31‑inch gap at the top of the Long
Stairs, and a guide who hurries only makes a pile‑up there, so let her take her time. The screen door on the
ticket window bangs by itself before a storm; that is the cave breathing out on a falling barometer, and on a
rising one the entrance culvert fogs. On a hot August afternoon, 180 people at about 100 watts apiece plus the
lamps will genuinely put a degree and a half into the air near the entrance, and it takes till morning to come
back down. A soda straw grows about a tenth of a millimetre a year — an inch a century — so the stubs at stop 8
that were snapped off between 1928 and 1953 are snapped for good, and we light them on purpose. Coins in the
Cold Pool are copper and copper is bad in that water; we go in with a magnet and a net. And the names — Bridal
Chamber, Frozen Niagara, Wedding Cake — were written by Mr. Arliss Ploog selling tickets in 1931. They are
advertising, not geology, and they have sold a great many tickets. The 148 steps are why there is an elevator,
and the elevator is why the ticket is four seventy‑five. See you at two o'clock! — Dessa Runion‑Ploog
CAN YOU FIND YOUR WAY TO THE BRIDAL CHAMBER?
Use your crayon! One way in, one way through.
C&R Electric of Gainesville hung the new fixtures for us in the spring of 1983 — 300 watts
in the Cathedral where there used to be 750 — and there has been no green on that wall since. Tell them Dessa
sent you. Our sincere thanks to the twelve businesses on this mat: Gainwright Motor, Della's Cut & Curl,
Brysco Feed, The Noel House, Hollis Well & Pump, Turnbow Locker, Earline's Flowers, Six Mile Marine, Paulk Rexall,
C&R Electric, Vestal & Son, Dothager Tire and Snoddy Implament. Ad space for 1986 sells in February — call the cave!
FORM 4409 — SET DOWN: 1 · PRINTED BY HOWELL COUNTY WEB PRESS, WEST PLAINS, MO · 40M 3‑85 · TWO COLOR ON 60# COATED · NOT FOR RESALE
The crayon is on the corner of the mat. Drag it. Slow presses hard, fast skips. There is no eraser and there is only the one crayon.more mats off the stack