Talking Rocks Cavern

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Talking Rocks Cavern is a cavern system in Branson in the US state of Missouri. It is a privately operated tourist destination and is only a few minutes drive from the city of Branson.

Guided cave tours are offered to visitors at regular intervals. The visitors are led through a narrow opening into the cavern and the tour leads you down a flight of narrow stairs to the floor of the cave. There are about 150 stairs. The caverns have some amazing formations, the most attractive of which are the 'curtain' and the 'bacon formation'. The tour also includes a light and sound show, during which all the artificial lighting is turned off to give the visitors a view of what the cave looked like when the first discoverers descended into the cave. That and the ensuing play of lights is an exciting experience.

The bottom of the caves gets routinely flooded during heavy rains. Water seeps in from the surface level and the cave acts as a drainage system. The water is taken down further from the cavern and finally emptied into the river further downhill. The electrical wiring for the portion of the cave is made to underwater standards to accommodate the flooding. And the tour is cut short during flooding as the access ways will be submerged in water.

There are sections on the cavern where you can observe that some formations have been broken off. This was done by the early explorers. While it was unfortunate that the formations of millions of years were broken off, at the time, the broken pieces served to demonstrate the beauty of the caverns, which would not have public access until years later.

The caverns have very few life forms that are typical to caverns because the mouth of the cave was always covered since its discovery. Currently the mouth of the cave is enclosed in a building where the tour starts. The building also houses the gift shop.