The cave systems commonly are reticulated patterns, faithful delineations of the joint system of the formation, with no integration toward a trellised subterranean drainage pattern. The distribution of the lead and zinc ores gives no indication of any former lower water table. Four levels are known in the Dubuque caves, the lower two full of water until pumped out during the mining operations. Only one of the caves described contains a stream today or shows evidence of ever having contained one. There is good evidence in this cave that before the stream entered there was only a reticulated three-dimensional network of solution-widened joints such as all the others described still are. It is concluded that each cave system has been made by solution below the water table and that only one of these has later been modified by a vadose cave stream.