Cavers heard wind roaring from beneath a rubble-choked pit in New Mexico; after years of digging they broke through in 1986, and more than 145 miles of Lechuguilla Cave have since been mapped

For decades, Lechuguilla Cave was just a footnote in New Mexico’s Guadalupe Mountains: a 90-foot entrance pit leading to 400 feet of dry, dead-end passages that had once been mined for bat guano.

But in the 1950s, cavers began noticing something strange: wind roaring up from the rubble-choked floor, hinting at hidden passages below.

Acting on that hunch, a team of Colorado cavers obtained permission from the National Park Service and began digging in 1984.

On May 26, 1986, they broke through into vast walking passages, launching one of the most significant cave discoveries in modern history.

This article draws on the National Park Service’s official history of Lechuguilla Cave.From a forgotten pit to a world-class caveBefore 1986, Lechuguilla was considered a small, fairly insignificant historic site in the backcountry of what is now Carlsbad Caverns National Park.