The legacy of the Grand Canyon’s Roaring Springs – Water salvation from a giant cave

Roaring Springs, as it appears from the North Kaibab Trail, 4.7 miles from the North Rim.

ROARING SPRINGS is the reliable source of water that keeps visitors quenched at both the North and South Rims of the Grand Canyon.

Today, if many people think of a cave in the Grand Canyon, they may actually envision Grand Canyon Caverns, located along High 66, southwest of today’s Grand Canyon village.

However, “Cave of vast size is found in Grand Canyon” was an April 11, 1928 headline in the Tucson Citizen newspaper.

This cave was actually Roaring Springs.

Three workmen employed on building a water pumping station for the new lodge being built atop the North Rim went inside the cave for an estimated two miles. They only turned back, because a boat was needed to go deeper inside the mountain.

“Roaring Springs emerges from openings in the cliffs and the water cascades down in falls,” the story stated.

    Driving south on the Kaibab Plateau, toward the North Rim of the Grand Canyon  in mid-May. Is there an actual huge lake of water beneath this plateau? Some believe there is.

One of the apertures is large enough to permit a man access and Bill Denson of South Dakota went inside with a small flashlight. Seeing vast spaces and tunnels inside, he returned outside to tell co-workers, Mack Jensen of Toquerville, Utah and Paul Swain of Salt Lake City, what he had seen. The three secured gasoline lanterns and extra fuel bottles and went exploring inside for four hours.

“There is a regular labyrinth of tunnels in there,” Jackson said. “And, we didn’t try to explore all of them.”

They found four connecting tunnels.

                            A sign highlighting the importance of Roaring Springs on the North Rim.

“At the place where these four tunnels come together, there’s a big river coming down one of them, dividing among the other three. These divide again and again, so that all the waterfalls you see in the canyon that we call Roaring Springs are just the ends of smaller tunnels. The one big creek supplies them all,” Jackson said.

One place, the walked along the river on a narrow ledge and estimated the water below to be at least 20 feet deep.

Finally, two miles in, they came to a large room filled entirely by the river.

“As far as we could see, the cave and the river got bigger and bigger. The river is too deep to wade and too cold to swim, or we would have gone further,” he said. “The inside of the cave is very beautiful. It is filled with stalactytes and stalagmites …”

                             A sign along the North Kaibab Trail, just above Roaring Springs.

The story concluded that since the caverns of Roaring Springs are so vital a natural resource to the area, that the National Park Service may prohibit future exploration inside.

It appears that is the case, about a century later.

The story also said some believe that there is a huge underground lake beneath the Kaibab Plateau and that is what fuels Roaring Springs.

There are no streams on the Kaibab Plateau, north of the Grand Canyon, and none on the South Rim either. 

That’s because the limestone rock below and many sink holes absorb almost all the surface water and take it underground.

Some tests in the 21^st Century have shown that as little as six days is all that was required for some rainwater on the Kaibab Plateau to exit through Roaring Springs.

A section of the trans-canyon pipeline from Roaring Springs, as it appears above Indian Gardens, along the Bright Angel Trail. Note how vulnerable the pipeline is.

The 12 or so miles of pipeline from Roaring Springs to Phantom Ranch suffer frequent leaks and breaks, whereas the pipeline across the Colorado River and up the South Rim are much more stable.

Roaring Springs supplies a vast majority of the water for both the North and South Rims.

Even as recent as the early fall of 2022 there was a brief stint of rationing water on the South Rim, when some breaks in the trans-canyon pipeline diminished the outgoing water supply.