Lava River Cave closing early for improvements, visitor safety project

Paving work at Lava Lands Visitor Center to limit parking

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Lava River Cave, located in the Newberry National Volcanic Monument south of Bend on the Bend-Fort Rock Ranger District, will be closing early this season to allow work in the area to improve visitor services, officials said Friday.

Beginning Monday, August 23, Lava River Cave will be closed to complete work that will improve visitor access, mitigate tripping hazards and increase overall public safety around the cave.  

The Deschutes National Forest is following fire mitigations under the stipulations of the current Industrial Fire Precaution Leve IV including pre-wetting vegetation, site weather monitoring, and firefighting resources located on site and will continuously monitor for any fire hazards.

Lava Lands, which includes the Lava Lands Visitor Center Lava Butte, and several trails, will remain open. However, the south parking lot of Lava Lands will close for repaving beginning Monday, August 16. A temporary exit will be in place before repaving starts.

When the south parking lot project is completed and reopened, the north parking lot will close for repaving. The public should be aware that parking capacity will be limited during these repaving activities.

Lava Lands is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Sunday, Sept. 26. After that, Lava Lands will only be open on the weekends from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. until it closes for the season on Monday, Oct. 11.

Due to current COVID19 conditions,  films are not being shown at Lava Lands Visitor Center. However, the exhibit hall is open to the public seven days a week. The visitor center lobby and bookstore are also open. Please note that capacity is limited in the visitor center, and masks are required at this time.

All of the visitor improvements to Lava River Cave and Lava Lands were funded through the Great American Outdoors Act, which was enacted to help reduce the backlog of recreation infrastructure needs for public land management agencies.