What next? Like lakes and waterfalls, caves are temporary features of the drainage pattern of an area. The same processes which produce them will eventually destroy them. At Paradise Lost we see that an appreciable part of the original room has already been filled with cave deposits. Many side passages in the caves have similarly been blocked off by the accumulation of flowstone.

On the outside, surface erosion will wear away the roof rock until the caverns collapse. The rooms will be filled with sunlight and exposed to rapid weathering. The calcium carbonate that was laid down in the Triassic sea, then lifted into mountains, then changed to calcite cave deposits, will again be dissolved by water and carried back to the sea. We know this because remnants of other caves reveal the pattern of creation and destruction common to all caves. The end will not come at Oregon Caves for thousands or millions of years. But it will come. The work of water and other erosive forces never ceases.