In 1880 two brothers, John and George Pickett, were hiking Williams Canyon on an outing led by the Reverend Roselle Cross when they noticed their candle flames bending. Wind was coming out of a crevice in the rock. They crawled through it into a large chamber, and within days Cross had written up the discovery. The name comes from that draught, though it also attaches to an older story: both Apache and Ute people are believed to have known the cave, and the Apache were said to hold it as the home of a Great Spirit of the Wind.
The cave sits just west of Colorado Springs off Highway 24, near the Manitou Cliff Dwellings, and it has been running tours more or less continuously since 1881, which makes it one of the longest operating show caves in the country.
The part worth knowing about is the part you cannot see. In 1984 a room called Silent Splendor was found, packed with rare crystalline speleothems including a remarkable concentration of helictites, the ones that grow sideways in defiance of gravity. Rather than open it, the operators sealed it behind an environmental gate with a tube that holds the moisture in, because the formations only keep growing while the air stays damp. It is closed to public view and stays that way. A further passage, the Adventure Room, was opened on 8 May 1988.
Tours range from the straightforward lantern tour to caving trips that put you on your hands and knees in undeveloped passage. Above ground the site has drifted some way from geology, with a free fall ride called the Terror-Dactyl bolted to the canyon rim, and guides who have been dropping things into the bottomless pit for a very long time.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
