Chances are, many readers have been to Carlsbad Caverns numerous times. Below is is an excerpt from reporter Alvin Rucker’s column “Across the Trail of Billy the Kid” in the July 6, 1929 issue of the McCurtain Gazette published in Idabel, Oklahoma:

Tourists from Oklahoma who plan to drive over the Oklahoma City – Carlsbad Cavern route this vacation season should arrange travel schedule so as to reach Lubbock, Texas, at the end of the first day’s drive, and Carlsbad the second night. It is necessary to be at the cavern entrance at 10 o’clock a.m. in order to get through, for at that hour the “donters” start. The cavern is operated by the federal government. One daily trip is made through the cavern, about five hours being required. All go in a big mob, and for every 20 visitors there is one “donter.” It is the “donters'” business to go along and tell you to quit whatever you happen to be doing. It’s “don’t walk so fast;” “don’t walk so slow;” “don’t go in there;” “don’t touch the rocks;” “don’t carry away any of the formations.” When I got out of that cavern I was as obedient as a private in the Army. It is necessary for the guides continually to admonish the visitors in order to prevent accidents and to preserve the cavern in its pristine condition for succeeding generations. Much of the original beauty of Mammoth cave, Kentucky, been lost through wantonness on the part of visitors, and the government is wisely trying to preserve Carlsbad cavern. A portable typewriter ean not give even a hint of the awe-inspiring grandeur of the interior of Carlsbad cavern, and the best that I can do is to send you some pictures, but even photography is pitifully inadequate. The cavern is electrically lighted and trails are absolutely fool-proof. The great dining room where hot dinners are cooked and served is 650 feet under ground. It was the farthest I had ever been from heaven. The head guide pointed out a formation which, he said, had required 60,000,000 years to complete, after the cave was formed. A man from New York demanded a recount, but got no second. Sixty million years may a long time when compared with man’s allotment of three score and ten years on earth, but after all, 60,000,000 years is not even a sun-up in eternity. If Billy the Kid had known of that cave they wouldn’t have had him yet.

Literature issued in connection with the cavern states that the ascent is so gradual and slow that even the aged need not fear becoming fatigued in making the trip. I noticed, however, that a white-haired old gentleman from Maryland who was making the trip the day I was in the cavern panted like a prize fighter in the last round he got half way through, and he gave up. Next day I saw him in Roswell and he was all right. He said that he wouldn’t have become tired but for the fact that he had asthma and heart trouble. He sorry that he was not able to go clear through the cavern. I told him that in a few more years they would be running ambulances through the cavern for invalids and that he could make the trip then. That cheered him up.

Those who want to turn back before the journey is completed are permitted to do so with an escort at dining room, and the others go on. I stayed until the finish, but I had rather change four flat tires in a downpour of rain or beneath the burning sun of the Carrizozo desert than climb that last flight of 200 steps, after tramping for hours in the cavern. In coming out it is the last 1,000 miles that seems the hardest on old folks. Five hours is a long time to be out  of God’s sunlight, during daylight hours. It seems like eternity. When I got out, I hurried to Carlsbad, 30 miles distant, and bought all the newspapers I could find, in order to see what had happened on earth while I was underground – it seemed so long. The dining room is operated as a private concession. The meals are cooked down there and there is a telephone in the dining room. The meals cost 75 cents and are worth the money. The cavern is probably the nearest bone-dry spot between the Rio Grande and the Canadian border.

Carlsbad cavern is winter resort for to the millions of Oklahoma bats that make the caves of Major county their homes during the summer. Bats are great tourists, according to batologists, who say they are exceeded in prodigious flights only by wild geese and flivver owners.