Things do fall into The Lost Sea, occasionally people, mostly cameras and smart phones. Walkways were built in the cave when The Lost Sea opened as an attraction in 1965. 'I had to continue the tour, out in the boat, as if nothing had happened. Tour guide Matthew told us that he was once out on the Sea with a young couple when the man suddenly proposed to the woman. The experiment failed, Kevin said, because trout can't see in the dark and because the constant supply of meat pellets gives them no incentive to leave. The trout are not blind cave fish they were brought down from the surface in the hope that some would find their way back to a lake or river. A bucket of beef liver pellets is brought along to hurl at the Sea's population of rainbow trout. The high point of any trip to The Lost Sea is the boat ride.

'They started yelling that there was 'Too Much Power,'' Kevin recalled. He said that the cave once had a tour group of 15 Wiccans, and when they reached the hole they grew nervous. Kevin also showed off a feature named The Devil's Hole, lit in lurid red. The Lost Sea's colony of rainbow trout will never see a rainbow. 'As they climbed up and out of the cave they would get drunker and drunker and pass out and fall back down.'Ītomic survival supplies, unopened since the Cold War. 'The temperature, air pressure, and humidity allowed people to drink more than they normally could,' said Kevin. Tour guide Kevin walked us down to the Sea and pointed out attractions along the way, such as leftovers from the cave's post-atomic-apocalypse survival stockpile (we've seen others elsewhere), and the moonshine still that was used when the cave operated as The Cavern Tavern in the 1940s. Now a blasted-out tunnel provides year-round access to the sea, and Ben (at age 73) was finally given credit and a plaque in the cave lodge.

It was lost again for 60 years (no one believed Ben) until the passage was drained by another drought. It was a drought that led to its discovery by 13-year old Ben Sands, when the water fell below the level of a connecting passage. Global Warming has had little effect on the Sea's level, but a drought can drain it. This is a freshwater lake, not a salty sea, as countless tour-takers have corrected the Lost Sea's very patient tour guides.īlasted out tunnel leads to The Lost Sea, bypassing a flooded passage that kept it lost. Fed by multiple subterranean sources, its extent is unknown, but its upper chamber has water that covers 4.5 acres at depths of 70 feet. The Lost Sea claims to be America's largest underground body of water. Smooth as glass and quiet as a tomb, The Lost Sea is a watery grave for carelessly dropped smart phones.

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