The park's namesake and its grandest chamber: Old Man's Cave is a recess cave stretching a couple hundred feet along the cliff beneath a massive overhanging brow of Blackhand sandstone. Walkers stand inside a natural hall where rain never reaches the back wall — the largest single room in a gorge full of them. The cave takes its name from Richard Rowe, a hermit trapper who, tradition says, made this shelter his home in the early 1800s; a dwell-length tale recounts his life of chosen solitude, his mysterious resting place somewhere in the gorge, and the gentle folklore that still clings to the canyon at dusk. The narration cues visitors to stop beneath the brow and take the full measure of the roof overhead.
Tip your head back — all the way — and take the measure of that roof, because you've just walked into the biggest room in the gorge. This is Old Man's Cave itself: a recess cave running a couple hundred feet along the cliff, carved deep beneath a great stone brow that leans out over the trail like a held breath. Notice how far back the shadow goes — the floor runs into the hill farther than you'd ever guess from the trail. Rain has never seen the back of this chamber. It never will.
The trick that made it is simple and patient: this sandstone carries a soft, crumbly middle layer between two tough ones, and water spent ages eating out the middle while the hard rock above held on as a roof. But standing inside changes the arithmetic. A ledge becomes a hall. An overhang becomes a roof you could shelter a crowd beneath. And people have sheltered here: dry rock like this has offered a roof for about as long as people have walked this country, and it never once needed building. The deepest version of that story belongs to Ash Cave, the great shelter to the south. This cave keeps a smaller, stranger story of its own.
Because listen to what this place is called. Not Great Cave. Not Big Shelter. Old Man's Cave — a whole state park, named for one single human being. Think about that: out of everybody who ever passed through this gorge, one person earned the name on the map.
So stay right where you're standing for half a minute. Boone keeps the old man's story himself, and this is the one spot on earth to hear it.