Crystal Cave
Interesting facts
- Bermuda-born Michael Frith, co-creator of the 1983 puppet series Fraggle Rock, has said the Crystal Caves inspired the Fraggles' underground world.
- Before the floating pontoon bridge was built, visitors were ferried across the underground lake in a boat constructed inside the cave.
- Both boys who stumbled on the cave while hunting for their cricket ball were about twelve years old at the time.
- Geologists explain the cave as the result of water moving sideways through saturated limestone and the rock collapsing, rather than rain seeping down from above.
- Some of the cave's crystal formations were broken by earthquakes long before anyone entered it.
- Neighbouring Fantasy Cave, reached by 88 steps, was shut by its owners in the 1940s and stayed dark for about sixty years.
- Bermuda is often said to have more caves per square mile than anywhere else on Earth, and the group east of Harrington Sound is the largest.
Why it is worth it
Floating walkways carry visitors across an underground lake so clear that formations lying more than 50 feet below the surface seem to sit just beneath it, while the roof above bristles with white stalactites and fine soda straws. Crystal Cave, in Hamilton Parish on the main island of Bermuda, close to Castle Harbour, is about 500 metres long and around 62 metres deep, and its lowest 19 to 20 metres lie under water. The cave formed when sea level was lower than today; as the ocean rose, it drowned many of the stalactites and stalagmites that had grown in the air, which is why so many of them now stand in the pool.
The cave was found by chance in the first years of the 20th century, by two boys, Carl Gibbons and Edgar Hollis, who followed a lost cricket ball into a hole in the ground; sources place the discovery in 1905 or 1907. The Wilkinson family, who had owned the land since 1884, lowered their fourteen-year-old son Bernard about 140 feet on a rope tied to a tree, with a bicycle lamp to light his way, and he came back describing a lake surrounded by crystal formations. The cave was soon opened to the public. Mark Twain came here on one of his visits to Bermuda and wrote of descending 150 steps to a lake under a roof of shining stalactites lit by acetylene jets, and in 1913 the cave served as a set for the silent film Neptune's Daughter.
The ground around Harrington Sound, just to the south, is limestone riddled with underground channels through which the sound drains to the Atlantic, and Crystal Cave is one of them. Its neighbour, Fantasy Cave, is deeper, was discovered around the same time, and was fitted with new paths and lighting in 2001. Both caves are still owned by the Wilkinson family trust and open onto a sub-tropical garden of palms and flowering trees.
Getting there
The caves are on Crystal Caves Road in Hamilton Parish, Bermuda. The city of Hamilton is about 7 km away, and L.F. Wade International Airport (BDA) about 5 km. Buses running between Hamilton and St. George's stop nearby.
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From the encyclopaedia
Crystal Cave is a cave in the British overseas territory of Bermuda. It is located in Hamilton Parish, close to Castle Harbour. The cave is around 500 meters long, and 62 meters deep. The lower 19–20 meters of the cave are below water level. The cave formed at a time when the sea level was lower; as the sea level rose, many cave formations which formed above water became submerged.
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