written and photographed by Mary L. Peachin
Nov 1999, Vol. 4 No. 2
In the rugged hills of the Whetstone Mountains, about 40 miles south of Tucson, Arizona, amateur cavers Randy Tufts and Gary Tenen found the “motherlode” More precious to them than gold was their 1974 discovery of an untouched natural treasure, a living cave with growing calcite formations, hidden under the desert floor for more than a million years.