Kuna Caves are an underground lava tube cave found south of Kuna, Idaho. There is currently one publicly known entrance to the cave, an opening in the ground with a caged ladder leading down into the cave.
The caves are about 50 feet (15 m) deep and run about a quarter mile north and around 1,000 feet (300 m) south from the entrance. The southern portion of the cave requires you to crawl through a trench dug out of the clay floor of the cave leading to a small space approximately 4 feet (1.2 m) long by 3 feet (0.91 m) wide by 3 feet (0.91 m) high in which you can turn around to return to the main cavern.
It is called Kuna Caves despite being only a single cave system. Though according to locals, at one time the system had been much larger and was composed of multiple caves—even stretching to the Snake River--before the Army Corps of Engineers blocked it off by detonating dynamite collapsing a portion of the cave. Although the entrance has a ladder to get down into the cavern, it is not maintained. The short road leading to the cave is unmaintained, often very muddy, and the cave itself is littered with trash and graffiti. The interior temperature of the cave hovers around 56 °F (13 °C) year round. Like all underground caves, the available light drops dramatically with distance from the entrance.
The official Bureau of Land Management stance on the cave is that it should not be visited by the general public.
Famous quotes containing the word caves:
“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
—Thomas Gray (1716–1771)