Within the rugged mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico is Sistema Huautla - an underground abyss that redefines the scale of the subterranean world beneath us. Explored to a depth of -1560 meters, it is the deepest known cave in the Western Hemisphere and tied with a cave in Austria as the 9th deepest in the world. Currently, Sistema Huautla includes 29 separate entrances, with their respective caves totaling 55 miles of passage. As the immensity of this underground wilderness is still not fully realized, exploration in Sistema Huautla is on-going.
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Located in Schoharie County, New York, the James Gage Nature Preserve includes 40 acres and three known caves. Three caves exist on the property: Balls Cave, Keyhole Cave, and Green Cave. Discovered by Peter Ball in 1831, Balls Cave is one of the oldest known caves in the state of New York, with more than 3,000 feet of mapped passage. During early exploration, many of its formations were removed.
James Gage donated the Preserve to the National Speleological Foundation (NSF) in December 1987, who deeded the property to the NSS in 1996.