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Welcome to Carlsbad Caverns Lodging!

Search our Carlsbad Caverns directory for accommodations that suit you! Choose from a complete list of hotels and lodging options in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Each listing offers information such as a general property description, amenities, services, prices, special deals and contact information. The Carlsbad Caverns Lodging room search allows you to view all hotels that have availability for your specific dates. All the hotels we offer have been rated and approved by AAA and the Mobil Travel Guide, the authorities in hotel inspection.

Most lodging options offer special rooms for families, including over-sized rooms and rollaway beds.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Carlsbad Caverns National Park is 20 miles southwest of Carlsbad off US 62/180. The park covers 46,776 acres in the rugged foothills of the Guadalupe Mountains, with miles of caves cutting through a Permian-age fossil reef. Among more than 100 known caves is Lechuguilla, thought to be the nation's deepest limestone cavern. The park's showpiece is Carlsbad Cavern, a series of enormous rooms that make up one of the world's largest caves.

Unlike most limestone caves that form when surface water flows through cracks in the rock, these passageways in the Guadalupe Mountains are the rare product of sulfuric acid. Oil deposits mixed with the water table to create an aggressive chemical that dissolved holes in the subterranean limestone. As the mountains rose over a period of 20 million years, the caves dried out, revealing the wonders of Carlsbad.
A steep, paved trail leads into the cavern's natural entrance, which measures 90 feet wide and 40 feet high. The cavern has more than 30 miles of surveyed subterranean corridors and great chambers. Formations range from small, delicate growths resembling plants to massive stalagmites, stalactites and columns. Many are tinted by iron and other minerals present in the limestone. Highlights include Bat Cave, Devil's Spring, Iceberg Rock, Green Lake Overlook and the Boneyard, a maze of limestone rock reminiscent of Swiss cheese.
The 8-acre Big Room, one of the most impressive chambers, has a 255-foot ceiling. Its clear pools contain limestone masses resembling lily pads. Other formations evoke an atmosphere of snow-banked forests, adding to the tranquil beauty of the cavern.

Every evening from mid-May to mid-October, hundreds of thousands of bats emerge from Carlsbad's uppermost chamber at dusk to feed on flying insects. Park rangers give a pre-flight talk in an amphitheater at the mouth of the cave. The flight outward lasts a half-hour to 2 hours; the bats return near dawn. Cameras are prohibited. During the day, bats hang head down from the walls and ceilings of a portion of the cavern not open to visitors.