The stone administration building, which has been erected near the entrance to the caverns, was built by hand from the solid rock foundation to the hand-riven cypress shake roof. The walls are built of beautifully weathered native limestone and the shelter roof is supported by hand-hewn timbers prepared on the ground. Parties, who tour the caverns, join guides here and return after the tour.
FLORIDA CAVERNS
Here we behold most wondrous sights
No mortal understands,
Of stalactites and stalagmites,
A house not made with hands.
Here Nature set to work her hands
In ages long since gone,
That man might quit his work on lands
To see and ponder on.
What means these fluted columns tall,—
These pendants from the dome?
These sculptured figures large and small,
Excelling Greece and Rome?
This drapery striped with Nature’s hues,
In regular spaces wrought?
These scenes man’s pride at once subdues—
They are beyond his thought.
The brute would look and turn away
To seek his fill of food;
’Tis ours to seek while here we stay,
The Great Creative Good.
The Architect within whose mind
The wonders of the sea,
The land, the sky, and all their kind,
Has wrought for you and me.
That we may look upon His deeds
And make our own expand,
For we alone best serve all needs
As tools within His hand.
—Charles Cottingham
Marianna, Florida
The stalagmite on the right is almost joined with a stalactite. If it does, it will make a column. The grape-like clusters in the upper foreground result when the flow of water is so slow that all of it evaporates from the ceilings and deposits its mineral load there.