Kuna Caves
Encyclopedia
Lava tube
Lava tubes are natural conduits through which lava travels beneath the surface of a lava flow, expelled by a volcano during an eruption. They can be actively draining lava from a source, or can be extinct, meaning the lava flow has ceased and the rock has cooled and left a long, cave-like...
cave
Cave
A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. The term applies to natural cavities some part of which is in total darkness. The word cave also includes smaller spaces like rock shelters, sea caves, and grottos.Speleology is the science of exploration and study...
found south of Kuna
Kuna, Idaho
Kuna is a city in Ada County, Idaho, United States. It is part of the Boise City–Nampa, Idaho Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 15,210 at the 2010 census...
, Idaho
Idaho
Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....
. There is currently one publicly known entrance to the cave, an opening in the ground with a caged ladder leading down into the cave.
The caves are about 50 feet (15.2 m) deep and run about a quarter mile north and around 1000 feet (304.8 m) south from the entrance. The southern portion of the cave requires you to crawl through a trench dug out of the clay floor of the cave leading to a small space approximately 4 feet (1.2 m) long by 3 foot (0.9144 m) wide by 3 foot (0.9144 m) high in which you can turn around to return to the main cavern.
It is called Kuna Caves despite being only a single cave system. Though according to locals, at one time the system had been much larger and was composed of multiple caves—even stretching to the Snake River
Snake River
The Snake is a major river of the greater Pacific Northwest in the United States. At long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean...
--before the Army Corps of Engineers blocked it off by detonating dynamite collapsing a portion of the cave. Although the entrance has a ladder to get down into the cavern, it is not maintained. The short road leading to the cave is unmaintained, often very muddy, and the cave itself is littered with trash and graffiti. The interior temperature of the cave hovers around 56 °F (13.3 °C) year round. Like all underground caves, the available light drops dramatically with distance from the entrance.
The official Bureau of Land Management stance on the cave is that it should not be visited by the general public.