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Sauta Cave National Wildlife RefugeSauta Cave National Wildlife Refuge (known as Blowing Wind Cave NWR until 1999) is a 264 acre National Wildlife Refuge|Refuge purchased in 1978 located about 7 miles downriver from Guntersville, Alabama. Managed as a National Wildlife Refuge, with no public use lands. It provides protection for the federally endangered gray and Indiana bat and their critical habitat. The cave provides a summer roosting site for about 200,000 - 300,000 gray bats and a winter hibernaculum for both the gray and Indiana bats. There are two entrances into the cave on the Refuge but they are closed to the public. The must-see event of the year at the Refuge is the bat exodus. Typical summer evenings at dusk, over 200,000 gray bats fly from the cave in the largest annual emergence in the eastern United States. In the past, the cave was used extensively. Saltpeter mining continued on and off from the War of 1812 through the Civil War to World War I. A building near the cave was also used as a fishing store and nightclub from 1919 to 1956. The cave was prepared as a fallout shelter by a local National Guard unit in 1962. External Links
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