When Russell Robinson returned home to Idaho from the military in 1954 he had no idea what he wanted to do. His father, an old-timer familiar with the country between Twin Falls and Sun Valley, including the broad miles of craggy wilderness created from the Black Butte lava flow, talked him into spending the spring with him exploring caves in the area.
These caves, created by molten rivers of lava that ran through massive tubes, had been formed when the volcano was active about 30,000 years ago.As the flows discontinued, they left hollow sections of tubing several miles in length and as big around inside as a building. In places they had caved in, leaving eerie sunken areas on the surface where, over the millennia, scraggly sage has softened the landscape. But in a few places, the tubes left portions of hollow caves.
One of these, which the ancient natives had referred to as "the cave of mysteries," was unique. The air that circulated through its crevices created a sort of natural air conditioning and a buildup of massive sheets of ice.
This natural ice chest had been used to advantage by the early settlers, especially in the railroad town of Shoshone 16 miles south. In boomtown days, Shoshone had 22 saloons and three restaurants, which, thanks to the ice cave, boasted the only iced beer in the West.
Unaware of the cave's delicate circulation, locals exhibited little concern for its pristine nature and blasted larger entrances to facilitate extraction of the ice. By the 1920s and '30s, much of it had melted. Still, exploiters of the cave, not realizing that a perfect low-pressure wind tunnel had been the reason for the cave's unique features, continued blasting and chiseling, and were amazed each year at the diminishing ice.
By 1940, the Shoshone Ice Cave had been abandoned.
From the first time he visited it with his father in 1954, Russell Robinson (an amateur archaeologist and geologist with an intense passion for nature) concluded correctly that mismanagement of the cave's circulation had been the chief cause of its demise.
Obsessed with restoring the cave to its natural state, Robinson launched into what would become his life's work, acquiring the land and beginning meticulous seasonal studies of the air patterns that he believed were the key to the cave's restoration.
Each year he would block up exposed openings and observe how it affected temperatures underground. Possessing extraordinary patience, he knew it would take years to see the most subtle changes.
In the meantime, Robinson built a small curio shop and a 30-foot-high concrete Indian (a personal memorial to Chief Washakie of the Shoshones) to attract tourists off the main highway. He added a small museum and living quarters for his family, and by the 1970s his dream was becoming a reality. Slowly, the ice was returning.
Tragically, in 1981 Russell Robinson, at the age of 49, was killed in an auto accident and his passion for the Shoshone Ice Caves was stilled.
The caves, however, are still owned and managed by Robinson's family.
Across the parking lot from Chief Washakie is a dinosaur, also made of concrete, with an Alley Oop-like caveman clinging to its neck. Inside the museum are all sorts of artifacts Robinson had collected. Agates, turquoise, polished jasper and petrified wood are spread out in glass display cases. There are also the bones of a prehistoric bear that he had found in a remote corner of the cave in 1963, exposed by the receding ice.
Inside the main shop, a young woman sits behind a cash register. The next tour of the Shoshone Indian Caves will begin in 15 minutes.
While waiting, we peruse the wares: racks of postcards, colored totems, animals carved en masse from soapstone, a hat rack with baseball caps and bumper stickers, and a sign that says, "AUGUST HAT BLOWOUT! $3.50 ea."
I buy a catalog that tells the story of the cave and begin to assuage my curiosity about its origins. Later, inside the cave, I study the wide slabs of ice that still are returning a millimeter at a time.
I had first been drawn to the Shoshone Ice Caves several years ago when the visage of Robinson's naively sculptured Indian and dinosaur had drawn me off the road on a drive to Sun Valley. At the time, I saw the place as a thinly veiled tourist stop and hadn't gotten out of the car.
This time around, I gained a broader view, which though encrusted with all the trappings of typical Highway Americana, is embedded in the simple vision of a man whose spirit still permeates the place 13 years after his death.