More than 1,000 years ago prehistoric Native Americans ventured into Carlsbad Cavern seeking shelter. They left behind no record of what their impressions of the cave were, but they did leave some mysterious drawings on cave walls near the natural entrance. Much later, in the 1800s, settlers discovered the cavern, drawn to it by the spectacle of hundreds of thousands of bats rising up out of the natural entrance in the evening. Some stayed to mine the hugh deposits of bat guano in the cave and sell it as a natural fertilizer. One such man, a cowboy named Jim White, became fascinated by the cave and spent hour after hour exploring it. White was eager to show the many natural wonders of this extraordinary place to others, but few persons believed his improbable tales of a huge underground wilderness full of unusual cave formations. It took photographs to convince skeptics that Carlsbad Caverns was everything it was said to be and more.
Although Indian settlers almost certainly discovered the caverns, local cowboy Jim White is credited with exploring them. He first descended underground as a teenager in 1898, using a home-made wire ladder, but it was over 10 years before he could interest anyone else in his discovery. Early visitors descended to the caves via an old mining bucket. In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed Carlsbad Caverns a National Monument and, in 1930, the Carlsbad Caverns National Park was established.