Cave Spring Interpretive Center

I love coming here with my dog and taking the outer trail during all the different seasons.

Cave Spring is an outdoor wilderness and educational space.It's used by the Scouts, so you'll see some meeting and picnic areas. It's got some picturesque spots, especially around the small pond. The common areas are a nice spot to leisurely walk, relax, let the kids burn off some energy and even have a picnic.Like others have said, once you get past the common areas and enter the wilderness, the experience begins to decrease. The trails suddenly get small, randomly branch off and are poorly marked. If you're not paying attention, heck even if you're trying, you might find yourself in the middle of nowhere. The good news, is the area isn't super large, so if you just keep walking, you'll eventually walk back to a larger trail, where you can find your bearings. The not as good news is getting lost could be an issue if you're walking closing to sun down..It's always fun spending somebody else's money, however I wish Jackson County would allocate some funds into cleaning up the backwoods a bit and improving the trails. This could be a cool little spot. Currently, it's just an A-OK one.

I recommend this place so much! It's super cute and it has a lot of trails. It's a place where you can go and just relax and take in the beautiful nature. It's not scary at all and there's places around the site to go eat your lunch. Look at some of the pictures I posted for more details!!

These are by far my favorite trails I have found in the KC metro area and thankfully they are super conveniently located near my house. Now the reasons that surround my ranking may persuade you to go elsewhere however, these are perfect walking trails for my small dog's body and my novice hiking body but they also offer some hills, unlike vast concrete trails that seem to just stretch on straight ahead for hours, for a little extra challenge and incline. I prefer unpathed unkept trails that are located in wooded areas over the wide pathed "sidewalk" varieties that circle a suburban enclave/strip mall embankment. I also do not bike so 8 mile trails are not really in my repertoire but intersecting, interlocking 2-3 mile trails advertised for children are, I guess. Anyways, these are not the most well marked individual trails but on the flip side it is quite hard to get legitimately lost on them since they all circle back around to the main attraction, the stone cave close to the entrance, next to a "scout camp" which is in the process of adding a tree house to the mix. There are multiple signs throughout the hike that name/point out stopping points such as "the falls" and a named gnarly tree which looks like something out of a Disney movie. This makes these particular trails appealing to families and children of all ages and it is also permitted to bring your four-legged friend on a leash and let them handle the natural rugged terrain. Overall, I would recommend these highly especially given the lack of viable options here in KC if your definition of hiking is getting your shoes a little dirty, walking in a single file line and not pounding the concrete five suburbanites deep.

Ken L. summed up this "nature trail" perfectly. Read his review for a detailed description.The paths are tiny and not very well maintained. There's a few random artifacts scattered within the woods. If you try hard enough, you can find a cave, but you can't really go inside of it.It's very simple to find the houses outlining the trails and one time I stumbled upon a red gate with a horse... who I had never seen in the years I've been walking the trails. I was like "Where the heck did this horse come from!?!" and petted him. The trails are walkable if you don't mind swatting away gigantic cobwebs blocking the paths and running into a few houses every now and then.

Good place. Is it in city and have noise and some trash? , yes. Is it perfectly maintained like a state park? No. But it beats the heck out of walking thru dirty city streets on hot asphalt or tripping over broken concrete. Vinca is everywhere so it's tick concern is down, and there is little to no poison ivy. Lots of urban escapee plants and volunteers the birds bring in. The wildlife is good and the historic chimneys and cave are interesting and add to a good walk.

It's kind of hard to describe this place. It's really collectively known as Cave Spring, and that encompasses a few things. The blurb from their website says: The Cave Spring Association, a not-for-profit organization, was founded in 1975 to preserve a historic Santa Fe Trail area in its natural state for the public.The organization manages and maintains the William Klein Park and theArt Clark Memorial Nature Center. The area is known collectively as Cave Spring.So, there's some history here, the Santa Fe trail and remnants (more like fragments) of buildings along some of the paths. There's a cave, which really isn't that big of a deal, and I'm really into caves. It's just a tiny cave in the side of a hill basically. I remember there being a very dirty bog along one of the trails. If you follow the trail, it takes you kind of deep into a forest and I remember seeing 2 deer and various birds, including a cardinal. it was hot and humid when we went, and when you're in the thick forest, that gets kind of nasty, unfortunately. At one point of the trail, I remember being able to see the backyards of houses. That seems to be a common feature of parks here; I haven't really found any that are totally secluded.So overall, there were a few interesting things here, but it was kind of a let down. Maybe I was expecting too much at the time. Not sure if I'll be back.

Pretty cool however not kept up. Litter eveywhere and no clear signs on what, where, etc. According to online the area is for sale. Bummer, could be awesome if taken care of. What little bit of signs that are there, broken. For a get away in the city limits. Nice

Cave is not impressive, but decent walking trail.

Came across this park on the Internet when I was googling new parks to explore. I read all about the springs, the old lake, the cave and the waterfall and thought this sounds like an interesting park so I saved it and went to check it out today with my mom. From the map on the Internet the park looked a bit more secluded then it actually was. Pulled into the drive and asked a lady that had just come off one of the trails and asked her if this was the way to get to the waterfall, the lake and the dam, she said it was, but said the waterfall didn't have much water in it. Took the trail down by the shelter up by the front building and came across a couple of camping areas. They had tree stumps to sit on and rings where you could start a fire. One of the areas even had a homemade teepee like thing, which I found pretty neat. The trails in there go literally every which way possible and some of them are poorly marked. Kinda lost track of which way we were going a couple of times in there. Came across the pond area and it was all green (covered in moss). We eventually came across the cave and I have to say that I wasn't too impressed with it. It was more like a hole inside of a hill then a cave. Cave is only like 5 feet in and to one side there's a thin crevice and on the other side it's big enough to sleep in if your brave enough to climb in there with bugs, spiders and crickets. Little cave was full of crickets. All in all the trip was ok. We got our exercise in and enjoyed the great outdoors. I probably won't be back to check this place out!