Explore a rare 25,000-year-old cave near Lake Michigan

BUCHANAN, MI – Most people explore the outdoors in Michigan on the beaches or in the woods.

But at a place called Bear Cave in southwest Michigan, you can explore the history of the Great Lakes underground.

Buchanan is home to one of Michigan’s only public cave systems. Bear Cave is a naturally formed cave on the St. Joseph River, a drainage basin of Lake Michigan. The cave is located about 15 miles from the lake shore at 4085 Bear Cave Road in Buchanan.

The cave is on private property and is part of the Thousand Trails Bear Cave RV Resort, but the resort offers public tours for $3.

The cave walls are 18 feet thick and made of tufa. The cave was formed by glacial deposits on Lake Michigan more than 25,000 years ago, according to the resort.

It’s a “natural cave” with a few rooms, said Katie Long, assistant manager of the resort. It’s not a huge cave system like Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.

Descending the stairs, visitors will see a Kansan Ice Age boulder deposited thousands of years ago, resort officials said. Tours of the cave are self-guided, along a well-lit loop trail. In some areas, signs point out fossils embedded in the walls and “cave pearls,” small spherical formations found only in limestone caves.

There are puddles of water along the way through the cave, but the resort has set up rocks and a platform so visitors can avoid the small, muddy puddles. Because the cave is level with the river, there is a risk of flooding at certain times of the year, says Adam Morris, manager of the resort.

“We have a natural deposit that seeps through the cave during the winter months,” Morris said. “It gets so wet down there.”

In some places on the cave walls and ceiling, water droplets stick to the walls due to the high humidity.

In the past, stories say that the cave was used as a hideout for bank robbers and slaves during the Underground Railroad.

Bandits robbed a bank in Ohio in 1895 and hid in the cave. This story led to the cave being used as a filming location for the 1903 silent film “The Great Train Robbery.”

One of the cave’s rooms, filled with a clear pool of water and marked with a “no swimming” sign, leads to a larger room where enslaved people were hidden during the Underground Railroad. According to the resort, the room is now home to the largest population of Eastern Pipistrelle bats in Lower Michigan.

The resort said the cave is most popular on weekends.

As for the history of bears in the cave – as its name suggests – Morris said it’s possible bears used it as a hibernation site in the past.

The only bears you’ll see now are stuffed animals you can purchase at the resort’s gift shop.

Looking for more activities along the Great Lakes in Michigan? Check out MLive’s Lakeshore Travel series.