“DSC02632” by Wheeler Cowperthwaite is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Located inside the Great Basin National Park where some of the world’s oldest trees live, the Lehman Caves is among 40 caves in the park but it is the only one that is open to the public via guided tours. It has a reputation for being one of the most “decorated” (with formations) caves in the United States and is estimated to be more than 2 million years old.
Discovered in 1885 by Absalom Lehman, the Lehman Caves is actually just one cave that became a source of entertainment and revenue from the moment it was discovered. Lehman charged a one dollar entry fee for anyone who wanted to explore the cave and also permitted visitors to take anything they wanted from the cave as a souvenir. Visitors today can actually see pieces of stalactites and other formations that were broken off from more than a century ago.
In 1922, President Warren G. Harding declared the Lehman Caves a national monument. Clarence Rhodes and his wife Bead were appointed official custodians of the cave and operated guided tours during this time. In an effort to increase business, the Rhodes converted one of the rooms in the cave into a meeting place for large groups of people, allowed weddings to be performed inside the cave, music to be played on the stalactites and stalagmites, and dances, picnics, and pageants to be hosted inside the Lehman Caves. While this made for some entertaining experiences and stories, it did not contribute towards the preservation of the monument.
Not too many years later, President Franklin Roosevelt transferred control of all national monuments to the National Park Service in 1933, and cleanup and rehabilitation efforts commenced in the Lehman Caves to remove all the litter and debris left by visitors. Today, conservation methods have improved drastically to keep the Lehman Caves intact while still remaining accessible to the public.
Filmography
In the 1960s, the Lehman Caves served as a stand-in for the surface of Mars in the movie The Wizard of Mars (click here to see an image from the movie set).
The Lehman Caves was also the subject of a National Geographic video, a television episode of Wild Nevada, and another television episode of Outdoor Nevada.
You can view the full Lehman Caves filming location details here and don’t forget to register your project! You can also take a VR tour of Lehman Caves here: AllAroundNevada.com.
To find more film-friendly locations, be sure to visit our Nevada Filming Locations Database!