Post by L Roebuck on Jun 19, 2006 7:27:22 GMT -5
Lighting up cramped caverns
Electrical overhaul faces hurdles at underground park
By Gazette News Services
WHITEHALL -- Sixty-five years ago, the Civilian Conservation Corps snaked electrical wire through Lewis and Clark Caverns to illuminate magnificent limestone formations and narrow footpaths in a Montana mountainside's pitch-black hole.
The lamps enabled visitors to view limestone columns, cathedrallike spires and formations named for the things they resemble: popcorn, bacon and soda straws. Today, the annual 55,000 visitors taking two-mile, guided cave tours still rely on those Depression-era lights.
Not for long, though.
Designers are at work on an electrical system that accounts for most of an $800,000 improvement project at Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park. Preparations include the expertise of a cave cartographer from Texas and a lighting designer for the Smithsonian Institution. Officials expect rewiring to start this fall and continue into the spring.
"We want to take advantage of the technology that has developed since the 1940s," said Tom Reilly, assistant administrator of the Montana Parks Division.
Extraordinary challenges
The project presents some extraordinary challenges besides the tight spaces and other constraints of an underground environment.
Because oil from human hands harms limestone formations, the electrical workers must wear gloves. Soldering or other work that produces fumes may not take place in the caves, and the lighting project must take into account the delicate Western big-eared bat, a cave inhabitant.
The caverns' remoteness in the mountains of southwestern Montana presents some logistical hurdles as well.
"We are at the end of power lines and phone lines," said Lynette Kemp, park manager. "We don't have the best of utilities up here."
The park in the London Hills is 18 miles from the mining town of Whitehall and near the Jefferson River, which Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled with their Corps of Discovery in 1805.
Full Article: www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2006/06/18/news/state/40-caverns.txt
Electrical overhaul faces hurdles at underground park
By Gazette News Services
WHITEHALL -- Sixty-five years ago, the Civilian Conservation Corps snaked electrical wire through Lewis and Clark Caverns to illuminate magnificent limestone formations and narrow footpaths in a Montana mountainside's pitch-black hole.
The lamps enabled visitors to view limestone columns, cathedrallike spires and formations named for the things they resemble: popcorn, bacon and soda straws. Today, the annual 55,000 visitors taking two-mile, guided cave tours still rely on those Depression-era lights.
Not for long, though.
Designers are at work on an electrical system that accounts for most of an $800,000 improvement project at Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park. Preparations include the expertise of a cave cartographer from Texas and a lighting designer for the Smithsonian Institution. Officials expect rewiring to start this fall and continue into the spring.
"We want to take advantage of the technology that has developed since the 1940s," said Tom Reilly, assistant administrator of the Montana Parks Division.
Extraordinary challenges
The project presents some extraordinary challenges besides the tight spaces and other constraints of an underground environment.
Because oil from human hands harms limestone formations, the electrical workers must wear gloves. Soldering or other work that produces fumes may not take place in the caves, and the lighting project must take into account the delicate Western big-eared bat, a cave inhabitant.
The caverns' remoteness in the mountains of southwestern Montana presents some logistical hurdles as well.
"We are at the end of power lines and phone lines," said Lynette Kemp, park manager. "We don't have the best of utilities up here."
The park in the London Hills is 18 miles from the mining town of Whitehall and near the Jefferson River, which Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled with their Corps of Discovery in 1805.
Full Article: www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2006/06/18/news/state/40-caverns.txt