Secret Caverns has spent a century being the other cave. Howe Caverns, bigger, slicker and heavily advertised, sits 1.4 miles away, and Secret Caverns responded by turning itself into something Howe could never be: a hand painted, defiantly strange roadside institution whose folk art billboards are scattered across Schoharie County and are, for a lot of people, the reason they pull in at all.
The cave itself is a limestone solutional cave, part of the larger Secret-Benson system, which runs to about 6,200 feet of passage. You go in through the original discovery entrance, now mostly sealed with concrete apart from a gap deliberately left for bats, and down 103 concrete steps that the guides call the petrified escalator. The main passage is a narrow slot cut by a stream, with shallow pools, some flowstone, stalactites, stalagmites and a single small column, and formations the guides have named over the years: the Liberty Bell, the Giant's False Teeth, Frozen Niagara.
In places the ceiling shoots up dramatically. That is glacial work. During the last glacial period, meltwater poured down moulins into the cave and reamed the roof out far above the level the stream alone would explain.
The tour ends at a hundred foot waterfall underground, which is the thing worth coming for and is not a formation you will see in many show caves. From entrance to falls is about 1,320 feet, and you walk back the way you came.
The bats are a live concern rather than a decoration. Populations here have been low since white nose syndrome went through, which is why the entrance is gapped rather than sealed and why the cave asks visitors not to bring gear worn in other caves.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
