Penns Cave and Wildlife Park

What sets Penns Cave apart is that you never leave the water. The cavern carries an underground stream, and the tour follows it by boat, a guide steering visitors through the winding passages by light that plays across the formations and their reflections. It is a very different feeling from walking a dry cave, quiet and gliding, with the stone rising straight from the water on either side.

The cave has drawn visitors since the 1800s and was among the earliest show caves developed in the country. Penns Valley was part of the ancestral homeland of the Susquehannock people, whose descendant nations continue elsewhere today, and the valley carries an old and much-embellished local legend, the tale of Nita-Nee and a French trapper named Malachi Boyer, long attached to the cave. Stories like these grew up around the cavern as it became a regional attraction in the horse-and-buggy era.

Penns Cave was dissolved out of limestone, rock laid down on the floor of a shallow sea hundreds of millions of years ago and later lifted into the ridges and valleys of central Pennsylvania. Slightly acidic groundwater, working along cracks in that limestone over immense spans of time, ate out the winding passages that the boat now travels.

As water continued to seep through the rock carrying dissolved minerals, it built the decorations that make the cave beautiful, the stalactites hanging from the ceiling, the stalagmites rising from below, and the sheets of flowstone along the walls. Each grows at a crawl, one mineral-laden drop at a time, so the formations you pass represent an unimaginable stretch of patient natural work.

Above the cave, the wildlife park spreads across the wooded hills of the valley. A guided tour, run on a seasonal schedule, carries visitors through large enclosures that hold animals native or historically native to the region, including American bison, elk, gray wolves, black bears, and mustangs, along with smaller residents and birds of prey.

The tour offers a close, safari-style look at animals that once ranged widely across Pennsylvania and, in some cases, still do in the wilder corners of the state. Paired with the cave, it turns a single stop into a full outing, the cool, watery world underground below and the open animal ranges of Penns Valley above.

The warm months are the fullest time to visit, with the wildlife tour running its regular schedule and Penns Valley at its greenest. Summer brings the most activity, and the cool cavern is a welcome escape from the heat above ground.

Fall lays color across the valley's ridges and farmland and keeps the wildlife tour a pleasure while the weather stays mild. The cave itself holds a steady temperature year round, so the underground boat tour feels much the same in any season, though the wildlife park and hours run on a seasonal calendar worth checking before you go.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.