DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just along for the ride. Deep in Kendall County, underneath the Texas Hill Country, there's a place that's been keepin' secrets since before humans had words for secrets. Cascade Cavern — and the story of how it got to where it is today starts a long, long time before any of us showed up.
We're talkin' the Pleistocene epoch. That's the marker's word, not mine. Probably formed by the underground passage of the Cibolo River, carving its way through the dark, the cavern is what geologists call a combination of joint and dip and strike types — two distinct cavern forms sharing one underground address.
Nature doesn't always pick just one way of doing a thing. Down inside, the place isn't empty. Not even close.
Cliff frogs and leopard frogs make their home there. Mexican brown bats too. And one creature found nowhere else in quite the same way — the Cascade Cavern salamander.
That's a creature with its whole identity tied to this one place in the Hill Country. Now, people have known about this cave for a good while. Archeological evidence uncovered near the cave indicates the presence of two Indian sites.
It is probable that the Indians used the cave for shelter, and here's the detail that stops you cold — soot found on the sides of a natural chimney suggests that they had fires in there. Fires underground, smoke rising through a chimney the earth itself provided. For a long time in more recent history, the cave went by a different name entirely — Hester's Cave.
Commercial development began in the 1930s, and it was in 1932 that the name Cascade Cavern was officially adopted, in a ceremony led by none other than James V. Allred — at the time the State Attorney General of Texas, and a man who would later become Governor of Texas. The name came from the seven waterfalls at the entrance to the cathedral room.
Seven waterfalls leading into a room called the cathedral. You can see why that name stuck. Over the years, Cascade Cavern has given visitors and Boerne area residents no shortage of chances for recreation and exploration.
And today it remains one of the state's important geological sites — part river, part history, part living ecosystem, all of it sitting quietly in the dark, waiting on the next curious soul to come looking.
What the marker says
Probably formed during the Pleistocene epoch by the underground passage of the Cibolo River, Cascade Cavern presents an interesting mix of geological, archeological, and historical features. It exhibits a combination of the joint and the dip and strike types of caverns, and is the home of a number of unusual animals, including cliff and leopard frogs, Mexican brown bats, and Cascade Cavern salamanders. Archeological evidence uncovered near the cave indicates the presence of two Indian sites. It is probable that the Indians used the cave for shelter, and soot found on the sides of a natural chimney suggests that they had fires. Commercial development of the cave, known earlier as Hester's Cave, began in the 1930s. The current name, taken from the seven waterfalls at the entrance to the cathedral room, officially was adopted in a 1932 ceremony led by State Attorney General, and later Governor of Texas, James V. Allred. Over the years, Cascade Cavern has provided visitors and Boerne area residents with many opportunities for recreation and exploration, and it remains one of the state's important geological sites. (1984)