What next? Like lakes and waterfalls, caves are temporary features of
the drainage pattern of an area. The same processes which produce them
will eventually destroy them. At Paradise Lost we see that an
appreciable part of the original room has already been filled with cave
deposits. Many side passages in the caves have similarly been blocked
off by the accumulation of flowstone.
On the outside, surface erosion will wear away the roof rock until the
caverns collapse. The rooms will be filled with sunlight and exposed to
rapid weathering. The calcium carbonate that was laid down in the
Triassic sea, then lifted into mountains, then changed to calcite cave
deposits, will again be dissolved by water and carried back to the sea.
We know this because remnants of other caves reveal the pattern of
creation and destruction common to all caves. The end will not come at
Oregon Caves for thousands or millions of years. But it will come. The
work of water and other erosive forces never ceases.