Thermal genesis of dissolution caves in the Black Hills, South Dakota

Abstract

Jewel Cave (118 km of mapped passages beneath an area of 2.7 km 2 ) and Wind Cave (70 km beneath 1.8 km 2 ) are, respectively, the fourth and tenth longest known cave systems and the world9s foremost examples of three-dimensional, rectilinear networks of solutional passages. Other caves in the Black Hills are similar. They occur in 90–140 m of well-bedded Mississippian limestone and dolomite. Walls throughout Jewel Cave are lined with euhedral calcite spar as much as 15 cm thick. Wind Cave displays lesser encrustations and remarkable calcite boxwork. Since 1938, opinion has favored cave excavation by slowly circulating meteoric waters in artesian confinement similar to that surrounding the Black Hills. We believe that the caves were developed by regional thermal waters focusing on paleospring outlets in outlying sandstones. Four sets of criteria are evaluated: (1) morphological—the three-dimensional, one-phase maze form having convectional features is similar to known and supposed thermal caves in Europe; (2) petrographic and mineralogical study of the chief precipitates shows a record of carbonate solution → calcite precipitation consonant with a model of cooling, then degassing, waters; (3) a thermal anomaly at regional hot springs is shown to extend beneath Wind Cave, where basal lake-water samples show chemical and isotopic affinities with the thermal waters; and (4) δ 13 C and δ 18 O measurements place all suspected paleothermal water precipitates in the domain of thermal calcites reported by others and being deposited at the modern hot springs. Finally, U-series dates show that the Wind Cave deposits are Quaternary and that the cave is still draining. Jewel Cave is truly relict and divorced from the modern thermal ground-water system; its great calcite spar sheets are probably older than 1.25–1.50 Ma.