page_title: Luray Caverns
section_title: Celebrated speleothems
hierarchical_section_title: Luray Caverns / Geology / Celebrated speleothems
caption_attribution_description: English: Image of the "Fried Eggs" rock formation at Luray Caverns. Category:Luray Caverns
context_page_description: Luray Caverns, originally called Luray Cave, is a cave just west of Luray, Virginia, United States, which has drawn many visitors since its discovery in 1878. The cavern system is generously adorned with speleothems such as columns, mud flows, stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, and mirrored pools. The caverns are perhaps best known for the Great Stalacpipe Organ, a lithophone made from solenoid-fired strikers that tap stalactites of various sizes to produce tones similar to those of xylophones, tuning forks, or bells.
context_section_description: After the water had been mostly removed by a lowering in the water table, these eroded forms remained and growth began to take hold via stalactites, stalagmites, columns, etc. Some notable formations include the Leaning Column, undermined and tilting like the campanile of Pisa; The Great Stalacpipe Organ, a large shield formation, that was used from very early on as an instrument for a variety of folk and religious songs; and a vast bed of disintegrated carbonates left by the water in its retreat through the great space called the Elfin Ramble.
  The cavern is yellow, brown or red because of water, chemicals and minerals.  The new stalactites growing from the old, and made of hard carbonates that had already once been used, are usually white as snow though often pink or amber-colored.  The Empress Column is a stalagmite 35 feet (11 m) high, rose-colored, and elaborately draped.  The Double Column, named from Professors Henry and Baird, is made of two fluted pillars side by side, the one 25 feet (7.6 m) the other 60 feet (18 m) high, a mass of snowy alabaster.  Several stalactites in Giant's Hall exceed 50 feet (15 m) in length.  The Pluto's Ghost, a pillar, is a ghostly white.
  The cascades are formations like foaming cataracts caught in mid-air and transformed into milk-white or amber alabaster. Brands Cascade is 40 feet (12 m) high and 30 feet (9.1 m) wide, and is a wax-like white.
  Flowstone draperies are abundant throughout the cavern and one of the best examples is Saracen's Tent.  The drapery formation can be found in all major rooms and ring like bells when struck heavily by the hand.  Their origin and also that of certain so-called scarfs and blankets is from carbonates deposited by water trickling down a sloping and corrugated surface.  Sixteen of these alabaster scarfs hang side by side in Hoveys Balcony, three white and fine as crape shawls, thirteen striated like agate with various shades of brown.
  Streams and true springs are absent, but there are hundreds of basins, varying from 1 to 50 feet (0.30 to 15.24 m) in diameter, and from 6 inches (150 mm) to 15 feet (4.6 m) in depth.  The water in them contains carbonate of lime, which often forms concretions, called pearls, eggs, and snowballs, according to their size. On the fracture these spherical growths are found to be radiated in structure.
  Calcite crystals line the sides and bottom of water-filled cavities.  Variations of level at different periods are marked by rings, ridges and ruffled margins.  These are strongly marked about Broaddus Lake and the curved ramparts of the Castles on the Rhine.  Here also are polished stalagmites, a rich buff slashed with white, and others, like huge mushrooms, with a velvety coat of red, purple or olive-tinted crystals.  In some of the smaller basins it sometimes happens that, when the excess of carbonate acid escapes rapidly, there is formed, besides the crystal bed below, a film above, shot like a sheet of ice across the surface.  One pool 12 feet (3.7 m) wide is thus covered so as to show but a third of its surface.
  The quantity of water in the cavern varies greatly at different seasons.  Hence some stalactites have their tips under water long enough to allow tassels of crystals to grow on them, which, in a drier season, are again coated over with stalactitic matter; and thus singular distortions are occasioned.  Contiguous stalactites are often inwrapped thus until they assume an almost globular form, through which by making a section the primary tubes appear.  Contorted stalactites may be caused by lateral outgrowths of crystals growing from the side of an active stalactite, or to deflections caused by currents of air, or to the existence of a diminutive fungus peculiar to the locality and designated from its habitat Mucor stalactitis.
  The dimensions of the chambers included in Luray Caverns cannot be easily stated, due to the great irregularity of their outlines.  There are several tiers of galleries, and the vertical depth from the highest to the lowest is 260 feet (79 m).
caption: The "Fried Eggs" rock formation at Luray Caverns
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