page_title: Mammoth Cave National Park
section_title: Visiting
hierarchical_section_title: Mammoth Cave National Park / Visiting
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Ein Nationalpark-Ranger fuehrt eine Gruppe Touristen durch Mammoth Cave. English: A national park ranger guiding tourists through Mammoth Cave.
context_page_description: Mammoth Cave National Park is an American national park in central Kentucky, encompassing portions of Mammoth Cave, the longest cave system known in the world. Since the 1972 unification of Mammoth Cave with the even-longer system under Flint Ridge to the north, the official name of the system has been the Mammoth–Flint Ridge Cave System. The park was established as a national park on July 1, 1941, a World Heritage Site on October 27, 1981, and an international Biosphere Reserve on September 26, 1990.
  The park's 52,830 acres are located primarily in Edmonson County, with small areas extending eastward into Hart and Barren counties. The Green River runs through the park, with a tributary called the Nolin River feeding into the Green just inside the park. Mammoth Cave is the world's longest known cave system with more than 400 miles of surveyed passageways, which is nearly twice as long as the second-longest cave system, Mexico's Sac Actun underwater cave.
context_section_description: The National Park Service offers several cave tours to visitors. Some notable features of the cave, such as Grand Avenue, Frozen Niagara, and Fat Man's Misery, can be seen on lighted tours ranging from one to six hours in length. Two tours, lit only by visitor-carried paraffin lamps, are popular alternatives to the electric-lit routes. Several "wild" tours venture away from the developed parts of the cave into muddy crawls and dusty tunnels.
  The Echo River Tour, one of the cave's most famous attractions, used to take visitors on a boat ride along an underground river. The tour was discontinued for logistic and environmental reasons in the early 1990s.
  Mammoth Cave headquarters and visitor's center is located on Mammoth Cave Parkway. The parkway connects with Kentucky Route 70 from the north and Kentucky Route 255 from the south within the park.
caption: A ranger-guided tour of the cave
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