The word "giant" is a bit of an understatement here, for this organ covers an area the size of three football fields.
We are right in the middle of Luray Caverns, an underground fantasyland of multi-hued stalactites and stalagmites, translucent draperies, reflecting ponds and other natural wonders.
Images: Cave adventures
The stalactites — they’re the columns that hang from the ceiling like giant icicles — have been harnessed into organ pipes. The Great Stalacpipe Organ, as it is called, came into being in the 1950s. A mathematician, electronic genius and musician called Leland Sprinkle spent three years selecting stalactites to precisely match a musical scale.
Then rubber mallets were wired throughout the complex and connected to a console in the 45-metre high ``Cathedral,’’ the largest cave. When the keys are played, mallets strike the appropriate stone “pipes,” and music is produced.
The most popular tunes, guides say, are Beautiful Dreamer, Beethoven’s Fur Elise, and Oh Shenandoah (hardly surprising, as Luray is the centre of the northern Shenandoah Valley.)
Sprinkle played for visitors for many years but nowadays a computer operates the mallets. But the console is still there.
Paved, well-lit trails guide visitors through this, the largest and most impressive of the caverns that dot the Blue Ridge Mountains of western Virginia. Visitors are given headsets offering a running commentary and guides are placed all along the route to answer questions.
One recurring question is: How did this happen? The guides explain that, over millions of years, mildly acidic rainwater percolating through upper layers of hard rock ate away at the softer limestone strata, eventually carving the caverns. Sediment in the water dripping down ends up, again over eons, as stalactites, stalagmites (columns that rise from the floor) and draperies (from water dripping down the walls).
And the process hasn’t stopped.
“New deposits accumulate at the rate of one cubic inch every 120 years,” says a guide.
When you reach an underground pond called the Wishing Well, you notice that previous visitors have thrown coins into it. That inevitably leads to the question: How much? We’re told that, since 1954, when they first began to count it, 20 million coins have been tossed in.
“So far we’ve taken out more than $600,000. The money goes to charities,’’ the guide says.
Luray Caverns, designated a Registered National Landmark by the U.S. National Parks Service in 1974, attracts some 500,000 visitors annually.
The caverns were discovered on Aug. 13, 1878, when Luray tinsmith Alexander Campbell felt a draft of cold air from a hole in the ground on a hill west of town. He and his companion widened the opening and, candles in hand, climbed down. They found themselves in what they’d later learn were the largest caverns east of the Mississippi.
Smithsonian Institution experts came to visit. Their 1880 report says: “It is safe to say that there is probably no other cave in the world more completely and profusely decorated with stalactite and stalagmite ornamentation than that of Luray.”
Also on the site are an historic car and carriage museum and the “Luray Singing Tower,” a 35-metre high structure containing a carillon of 47 bells.
For further information, visit luraycaverns.com. Travel information on Virginia is available at virginia.org.
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