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"When the Southern Pacific Railroad (now Union Pacific) came through southern Arizona in 1880, the town of Benson was founded and named for Judge William B. Benson of California, a friend of Charles Crocker, president of the railroad.

The city's origins are embedded in the railroad industry, and its history etched in times of the Spanish conquistadors, Jesuit priests, trappers, the Mormon Battalion and prospectors that is now Benson and its surrounding communities. Located within the picturesque San Pedro Valley, portrait-type landscapes of endless green pastures dotted by grazing cattle are commonplace in Benson and its neighboring communities of St. David, Pomerene, J-Six Ranchettes, Mescal and Cascabel, together, the area comprises the northern portion of the San Pedro River Valley.

In addition to the railroad, the Pony Express rode to and from Dragoon with mail and the Butterfield Overland Stage carried mail and passengers from St. Louis to San Francisco. In Commemoration, Benson holds an annual celebration, the Butterfield Overland Stage Days each October.

While Benson continues to draw tourists, the city is taking steps to beautify the historical downtown district. An authentic old-style railroad depot houses the city's Visitor Center and the Benson/San Pedro Valley Chamber of Commerce. One of Benson's best features, is its numerous, long established, family owned restaurants, with home-style cooking & family-friendly atmosphere."

About 11:15 we loaded-up the four remaining cars for the drive to Kartchner Caverns State Park, about a 15-mile drive south on State Route 90. Kartchner Caverns State Park, located near the north end of the Whetstone Mountains, is a subterranean jewel box of spectacular, 200,000-year-old towering formations of stalactites and stalagmites, and is one of the only a handful of "living" caves in the world. The 550-acre park complex also includes a Discovery Center and is home to hundreds of Myotis Velfere bats, which roost here as part of their migration.

The follow are some excerpts by Ken Travous, Director, Arizona State Parks from their booklet:

"Kartchner Caverns State Park opened to the public on November 12, 1999. Such a simple statement that is, but it took us years to be able to say it. Years of secrecy, excitement, struggle, and bafflement. Cave experts, park rangers, geologists, construction crews, bat biologists, legislators-all of us working as a team on a monumental project, the likes of which few had ever tackled before.

Because Kartchner's humidity is almost 100 percent and the temperature is a steady 68* F just below the surface of the desert, we knew we'd need to ensure that the cave didn't dry out when we opened it to the public. Dry air would halt the essential chemical reactions still at work in the cave.

Lighting the cave would be particularly tricky. Microscopic spores would enter on people's clothing, and the lights added along the paths could trigger their growth in the humid conditions, with untold results. Keep the lights too low, however, and visitors would stumble dangerously.

The list of issue seemed endless. How would we protect the small colony of bats that roost n Kartchner during the summer? How large should a group tour be, and how long should a tour take, without threatening the subterranean ecosystem? Could we develop cave trails without stairs that would allow complete access for the disabled visitor?

I recall a hunting trip with my grandfather when I was young. Alone for a while, I found a large English walnut tree to sit under and, thinking youthful thoughts, wondered if anyone had ever sat there before. Looking down, I say a discarded tin can. I had wondered ever since if there were any place left on Earth that man hadn't ruined with disrespect. Kartchner Caverns is such a place."

"Randy Tufts, a Tucson native had an insatiable curiosity about caves and in 1966, started making regular trips to the WhetstoneMountains looking, as he put it, "for a cave no one had ever found." After about a dozen trips into the range, Tufts had met with little success. Finally, out of frustration he stopped at the Lone Star Mine and asked one of the miners if he knew of any caves in the area. The miner said yes, there was a cave nearby.

Tufts returned with two friends and his uncle. They hiked around the limestone knolls and eventually found a sinkhole and an opening that led into a small chamber. There was a narrow crack along one wall and they looked to see if it might lead deeper in. They could determine nothing and, feeling the boulders near the crack were unstable, decided to leave. The chamber must be just another dusty dry hole that wasn't worth pursuing. However, Tufts marked the hole on his topographic map.

Gary Tenen, a fellow student and co-worker at a coffeehouse where the both worked, knew of Tufts interest in caving, but he had never tried it. Because of his own interest in science-he was an entomology student-he asked Tufts to take him on one of his caving excursions. Their first trip was to a cave in the Huachuca Mountains, south of the Whetstones, and even though it was a heavily vandalized cave, the experience was enough to whet Tenen's interest in caving.

Tufts told Tenen about his theory regarding the sinkhole that he had explored in the Whetstones and the two agreed to explore the next weekend. On a cool November afternoon, they went back and entered the sinkhole. They squirmed into the chamber, and Tufts said that, although everything looked much as he remembered it, something seemed different. "This time the air was moving." Tufts said. There was a breeze coming up from between the rocks, through a crack. Not just any breeze. It was warm, moist, and smelled like bat guano. This was new and compelling evidence." Following a year of more intensive exploration of their discovery, Randy and Gary realized that they had discovered something very special. It was only after that they had realized that what they had found was on private property, that they approached the Kartchner family to let them know about the treasure that was located on their property. Over the next 14-years, Gary and Randy, along with the Kartchner family, explored ways to protect and develop the cave. In some cases, they had assumed aliases to help conceal the location of the cave as they met with various groups and organizations around the country. It seems that the people that are known for cave exploring, are often associated with specific locations and in order to keep the location of their find a secret, it required the assumption of the aliases. Their efforts to fund the development of the cave using private funding did not prove to be feasible and after consulting with the Kartchner family, they decided that it might be more realistic to explore the possibility in convincing the state government to purchase and develop the property.

After a clandestine meeting with then Governor Bruce Babbit that captured his interest, the Governor wanted to see the cave for himself. After a tour of the caverns by Babbit and his two young sons, who were sworn to secrecy, Babbit was impressed and threw his support behind the clandestine movement to get the cave into public ownership.

It took three more years, two more governors, two more state parks directors, and some tense, behind the scenes political maneuvering before the state bought the cave. Everyone involved was so consumed with the need for secrecy that State Parks Director Ken Travous asked state legislative leaders to write the bill authorizing the cave's purchase in obscure language so that no one would know what was at stake.

Senate Bill 1188 was passed on April 27, 1988 authorizing the expenditure of $1,625,000 to purchase the property and only then was the language changed to clearly establish what is now Kartchner Caverns State Park. "

Of course, the $1.6 million to purchase the property was just the tip of the ice burg. It took many more millions to develop the property and cave into the jewel that it is today. I can recall reading about the often contentious relationship between the legislature and the State Parks Director regarding the cost overruns involving the park development. I am truly confident that, after taking one of the cave tours, that once you emerge from that jewel of a cave, that you would be indisputably convinced that they did it right.