Jim White’s first descent into the cave was in 1901. During the next few
years he was unable to convince anyone of the attractions of the cave
sufficiently to have them pay much attention to its beauty. But as early
as 1903 interest developed in the guano known to be there. In that year
Abijah Long filed a placer mining claim to guano and other mineral
rights for twenty acres around the entrance to the caverns. This claim
is recorded in the Eddy County Mining Records. Again in 1908, and later
in 1910 and 1912, other placer mining claims were filed on land in the
vicinity of the cave entrance. This land was never patented. However,
the land to the east, over the Bat Cave, belonged to the Santa Fe
Railroad and was sold in 1905, and ownership of this forty acres changed
hands a number of times before it was finally acquired by the
government.
Jim continued to work on the ranch for awhile, but when the guano
operations began, his interest in the cave induced him to go to work for
the company removing the fertilizer. Although it is estimated that about
a hundred thousand tons of guano were removed from the Bat Cave between
1903 and 1923, it was probably not a very profitable operation; for at
least six different companies had a fling at it. Jim worked for all but
one of them off and on, and never did any more than just make a bare
living.
Through all these years Jim White made frequent efforts to convince
someone—anyone who would listen—about the wonders he had seen beyond the
cave entrance, beyond the rooms containing the guano. Despite his
failure to win more than casual interest, whenever there was a lull in
the guano business, he would take food and other supplies and explore
more of the cave. In fact, Jim succeeded in getting some of the miners
to explore the cave with him during their spare time, as is proven by
the prevalence of names and dates (1904 to 1911) smudged on the
ceilings, walls and rocks as far into the caverns as the King’s Palace.
One day came the thought that if he could get a photographer to make the
trip with him, he could show photographic proof to the world of his
now-favorite scene of adventure. His first attempt met with failure
simply because the man who had the camera wanted a hundred dollars for
the trip. Jim didn’t have a hundred dollars.
Along about 1920, economic conditions were mighty bad. Jim and Mrs.
White were living in a shack near the cave entrance. Jim was always up
at daylight, following the youthful custom long-ago established on the
ranch. One morning, however, Jim didn’t rise with the dawn. For one of
the few times in his married life, Mrs. White was up first.
She made coffee, then returned to the bedroom door somewhat alarmed, and
asked:
“Jim, I’ve never known you to stay in bed so late ... are you sick?”
Jim laughed reassurance. “I’ve just been layin’ here since day-break,
thinkin’. I’ve made up my mind I’m going to get out of this bed and
start showing people that cave, whether they want to see it or not!”
“How are you going to do it?” Mrs. White inquired.
“Right now I don’t know,” Jim stated. “But when I get up, I’m going to
start”.
[Illustration: _The Iceberg—One of the interesting features of the
Caverns_]
Jim lay still a little longer. The idea came that if the world could be
made to see the cave, trails and guard-rails ought to be built, to gain
even a relative amount of safety and accessibility. Jim rose, dressed,
ate breakfast and started. He began moving rocks and leveling
passageways through the first chamber. At dangerous ledges he searched
out cracks in the rocks, into which he drove discarded axles from old
automobiles. From one of these to another, Jim strung galvanized wire to
serve as hand-holds. Working alone most of the time, he seemed
tirelessly ready for an endless task, constantly buoyed by the thought
that he was building a pathway over which many others might travel, into
the incredibly beautiful fairyland so far below the hot desert.
Strange how much a man’s vision and energy can drive him to achieve!
Strange, too, that Jim White’s consuming purpose was to lure an
apparently disinterested world to see what he had seen—perhaps in order
to justify his years of insistence that the place did exist somewhere
beyond his own imagination. The world simply had to see this magnificent
spectacle into which he had first crawled.
Working in the cave those countless hours and continuing to explore
until he had visited most of the present known areas, Jim White felt his
awesome appreciation translated into something akin to love. He wanted
to display it proudly to other approving, comprehending eyes—and watch
them light with awe and wonder. Jim was an unlettered man, as were most
of his associates, and no written record of his findings was made.
At last two young men, crossing the country in an old jalopy pulled up
at the cave and asked Jim if there was a chance to see it! Chance? Jim
White would be delighted to show them through, he explained. One of them
had a kodak. When the young fellow asked about flashlight powder, Jim
told him about his effort to get a photographer to record a
picture-story of the cave. At Jim’s suggestion that flashlight powder
might be found in Carlsbad, the youths started back to town, offering to
see if they could find a photographer who would make the trip, taking
for his pay the right to distribute pictures. An early-morning start
into the cave the next day was planned by Jim White and the first two
persons from the outside world who ever expressed a desire to see into
the underground palaces!
Any human being in Jim White’s place would have felt as he did when his
first three guests—the two young men and Ray V. Davis, the photographer
they brought back from Carlsbad—started that stroll down the ageless
corridors! Hearing their gasps of appreciation was to Jim White an
accolade! Seeing their eyes was to find his belated, yearned-after
justification. Listening to them as they tried and failed to express
what they felt showed Jim White that at least three other men in the
world felt about the caverns somewhat as he did. He must even have
enjoyed hearing photographer Davis complain because there was no more
film, for Davis had used all of his two-dozen plates within the first
enthusiastic mile!
When the twenty-four pictures were developed and prints came before the
eyes of former doubters in town, Jim White was besieged by those who
wanted to take the trip through the cave. Red Wheeler and Harry Stephens
persuaded Jim to organize an excursion party for the tour, and so it was
that another “original thirteen” came to be recorded in the centuries
old history of Carlsbad Caverns. Wheeler and Stephens were two,
photographer Davis made three. The others in the original party were
Luther Perry, E. H. Weaver, Dan Lowenbrook, Homer Grabb, Coly Jones, J.
R. Yates, J. B. Morris, John Nevenger, J. R. Owen and C. P. Pardue, all
of Carlsbad. Superstition was relieved by the fourteenth member of the
party—Jim White, now Guide!
In those days, it was an all-day trip across the thirty miles of prairie
and mountain to the mouth of the cave. The party reached Jim’s shack
late in the afternoon, ate the supper Mrs. White had waiting, then
bunked early to rest for the all-day trek scheduled for daybreak. The
first sightseers were lowered by two’s ... Jim White at the winch ...
his passengers in the bucket used by the guano company to get down into
the Bat Cave. Down they went into the black shaft which was the doorway
to beauty.
[Illustration: _Passageway in the Hall of Giants_]
It never occurred to Jim White that he should charge admission to the
cave, and when the party started back to town he refused to set a price.
The guests insisted on paying something, if only for the food, for Mrs.
White’s trouble in feeding and housing them, and Jim’s own trouble both
in the shack and in the caverns. The discussion ended with each guest
paying a dollar. The thirteen dollars Jim used to buy more materials—to
carry his trail even deeper into the cave.
A few days later on the streets of Carlsbad, Jim was greeted by one of
his “original thirteen” sightseers. “Jim, that cave of yours is the
greatest sight of its kind you or I or anyone else ever saw. You should
charge everybody you take through it, five dollars! Man, it’s worth it!”
[Illustration: _The Scenic Drive Within Carlsbad Caverns National
Park to the Caverns Entrance_]
Meantime, the thirteen had passed along the word until it seemed that
everyone was begging to be taken through the cave. Jim was at last
obliged to fix a price of two dollars, since visitors to the then
isolated spot had to be fed, and as the numbers increased, bunkhouses
had to be built. As a moneymaker, Jim White’s Cave was not a success in
those early days, since equipment and accommodations outran the income,
even at two dollars per person for the guided tours. Then there were the
days when Jim would greet some poor old farmer with a wife and bunch of
kids. The family would want to take the trip through the Cavern, now
beginning to achieve local fame, but who obviously could not afford that
two-dollars-each admission price. Since it would seem unfair to admit
them without charge while making others pay, Jim White would simply
declare that day as “A Free Day”.
[Illustration: _Graceful, Sheer Draperies of Pure Crystalline Cave
Rock_]
Jim White, the Guide, had the pleasure of taking the very poor and the
very rich through the fairyland beneath the New Mexico desert. Jim White
had fought for it so long he had become sentimental about the great
Caverns.
In time people throughout the world learned of the fantastic beauty of
the Caverns, and good roads became the pathways for awe-stricken
thousands who arrived to gaze at what no man could explain
completely—miraculous caverns that defy mankind’s vocabulary to
describe.
By 1922 the scenic and scientific values of the caverns were of local
and gradually expanding importance. Newspaper men and writers would
always receive complimentary tours from Jim White, who realized that
printed stories, in whatever publications, would have untold advertising
value. The crowd read of the Caverns at Carlsbad—they heard of them from
friends—and they gathered in increasing numbers to be lowered in the old
guano-bucket. Jim White lifted nervous spinsters across narrow ledges,
and pulled fat ladies up steep inclines. When his parties reached
particularly dangerous spots, Jim’s body was always in a position to
shield their eyes from the perils, so no one would become frightened,
and make a misstep. In spite of the rickety and exciting descent in the
old bucket, and the inadequacy of the trails, there was never an
accident ... never so much as a broken arm or leg. There were some
hairbreadth escapes, with Jim White’s firm hand grasping someone by the
seat of the pants to prevent a sudden plunge into a pit.
News of the wonderful cave out on the desert southwest of Carlsbad
finally reached Washington and the authorities decided to check up on
it. In April, 1923, the General Land Office in Washington sent Mr.
Robert Holley, a mineral examiner to make a survey. Jim keenly felt Mr.
Holley’s original scepticism when the newcomer said: “We didn’t feel as
though this cave was of much importance, but the Department thought I’d
better run down and measure it, so they could know if it is big enough
for them to consider”. Jim grinned and said little. The next morning Jim
White lowered Mr. Holley and his instruments into the cavern for the
first time. It took the government man over a month to finish his very
complete and accurate work and report. Scepticism turned to enthusiasm,
as is witnessed by the opening paragraph of his survey-report in which
Mr. Holley stated:
“I enter upon the task of compiling this report with a feeling of
temerity, as I am wholly conscious of the feebleness of my efforts to
convey in words the deep conflicting emotions, the feeling of fear and
awe, and a desire for an inspired understanding of the Divine Creator’s
work which presents to the human eye such a complex aggregate of natural
wonders in such a space”. In concluding, Mr. Holley said: “... it
appears that this cave is of such wonderful character as to be worthy to
be established as a national monument....”.
[Illustration: _Crystal Spring Dome, Largest Growing Stalagmite in
the Caverns_]