Boerne—Kendall County sits on the Edwards Plateau and has some of the most quintessential hill country in the state, but below the beauty on the surface of our state, lies a cavern with another incredible landscape.
“We’re in the middle of the hill country and it’s great,” said Jesse Hilger.
Jesse Hillger built bombs for the air force for 14 years, but today explores this explosion of exquisiteness known as the Cave Without A Name.
“I love it. It’s great… You can easily spend two, three hours down there and think it’s only 30 minutes,” said Jesse.
The second longest running showcave in Texas, the Cave Without A Name, was officially discovered by James, Harold, and Mary McGrath in 1938.
“They didn’t expect to discover an amazing cave down there, but they did,” Jesse explained.
In 1940, the Cave Without A Name took the title of Cave Without A Name after a local contest was held to name the cave. One 9-year-old boy claimed the cave was too pretty to have name, so it has been known that way ever since.
The McGrath children first encountered the cave while chasing a lost sheep, and the first few feet down they came across a moonshine shelter.
“We’re pretty sure that this was the area. If you look on the ceiling here you can see a lot of discoloration….Probably would have been for quite a few years as well…to get so much soot on the ceiling,” said Jesse.
Just a bit further down in the dark was something much more impressive. Keep in mind, the kids who discovered it did not have a nicely constructed stairway to get there.
“So we’ve gone down about 126 stairs, and here’s our cave,” Jesse said.
80 feet below the ground are six massive caverns with all sorts of curious features that have formed over thousands of years.
“When the limestone was created, that was in the early Cretaceous period and dinosaurs were actually still roaming the earth at that time. They couldn’t actually roam right over this area though, because this used to be the seafloor,” Jesse explained.
This marvel made over time almost looks man made, until a closer look is taken at the incredible formations formed over millions of years.
“So over here we have two really cool formations. The white formation right there is a really unique, a stalagmite. We call that one Modern Art, because people see different things, and some of the different things people normally see are mushrooms or jellyfish… Now this formation that’s in front of it, that one kind of looks like a nativity scene,” Jesse pointed out.
A little further down the line sits the throne room, a subterranean brook, and pools of water surrounded by sediment basins.
“So in this room we have some more stone rim ponds…These lower ponds actually fluctuate with the amount of rain that we get,” said Jesse.
Along with these beautiful pools is the best food reference found below ground.
“We have what I’ve been told is the longest piece of cave bacon in Texas. It measures over 20 feet,” said Jesse. “My nephew came down here a couple of spring breaks ago. He was about four years old at the time, and he told me he didn’t think he could eat a full piece of it.”
So if you have a hunger for some subterranean adventures, The Cave Without A Name is well worth getting below ground for on The Texas Bucket List.