Tuckaleechee Caverns (Blount County, Tennessee)

Yesterday morning, I drove up to Knoxville to attend a Craft Beer Festival, but while I'm in the area, I wanted to hit a few stops. After a somewhat rocky night, I got ready and left the hotel headed for Tuckaleechee Caverns near Townsend Tennessee. This is a privately managed cave system like many others and draws a lot of tourists from the nearby Great Smokey Mountains National Park, though it is technically not within the park.

Arriving just as the facility opened for business, I checked in and paid the tour fee and just started looking around while waiting for the tour to start at 10:15 am. A number of others arrived afterwards and by the time of the tour, we had a group of about twenty people ready to descend into the earth. Our guide lead us down a hall way and then a winding ramp into the original sinkhole that revealed the cave to a group of children in the early twentieth century. It had been known to the local Cherokee, but apparently not widely used for an purpose. 

Here the tour guide offers a little history and a little geology, as well as setting expectations for the tour. He explains that there are some 410 total steps to climb up and down over the course of about a mile-and-a-half and that the full tour will take about 90 minutes. Everyone nods their agreement and we descend down a set of manmade steps into the depths. 

The area of the cave the tour travels through is mostly well lit with stairs, paved walkways, and hand rails. Like most caves, it's cool and humid. The first section seems to be little more than caved in earth, probably from the sinkhole. Soon though, we enter an area much more 'cavelike', complete with stalactites, stalagmites, flowstones, and a running stream below us. Though much like the many other limestone cave systems I've visited in the the past, it's still quite beautiful.

We walk a short ways before the guide stops us and begins providing some basic cave education, and explaining in basic geologic terms how some of the features have formed over the eons. There are some really nice columns here and a very large flowstone that is considered (dead), as there is no longer water running over it causing the mineral deposit to grow any further. 

The stream below our feet ebbs and flows, runs in and out of the rock and continues through the cave at a pretty good pace in areas. Eventually, we reach the Big Room, which is said to be the size of a football stadium, though it's difficult to discern as depth perception in caves, which generally lack flat surfaces, is challenging. We reach an area in this room with some benches affixed to the stone walls and our guide askes us to take a seat. He proceeds to demonstrate true darkness by shutting the lights off. He also briefly convinces some of the younger participants that they can create "friction light", but rubbing their hands to together very fast. It makes for a good laugh, when he tells them the truth. 

Turning the lights back on, he points out a couple of large stalagmites far in the distance, including one called the "Dinosaur's Toothpick". This is a unique one in my experience in that it is so slender. It's impossible to tell it's height from so far away, but informs us that it is over twenty feet tall. 

Leaving the big room, we return the way we came and then passing back by the staircase we first descended to get here, pass by it an continue in the other direction along a paved path, which runs beside the stream in a zigzag pattern. There are a few areas to watch one's head, but the path is relatively easy to traverse. At one point we stop and our guide tells of the chemical composition of the water and how clean it is thanks to the limestone filtration. He invites us to reach down, grab a handful, and drink it. I and a couple of others do so. It's not as cold as I would have expected; cool, but not cold.

As we continue on, the sound of slapping water begins to fill the cave and our guide informs us that we are approaching the waterfall. Finally getting there, we are treated to a magnificent feature. A narrows stream of water is falling over a steep cliff in the ceiling to slap against a large mineral deposit and fan out around a moderately sized room and then falling into what may be the origin of at least this part of the stream. Looking up towards the source as it runs over the cliff, I can see another waterfall coming over another cliff much higher up. It must go on and on like this, but beyond this second waterfall, is darkness and the unknown. This is a really spectacular site and I'm glad to be able to see it.

After our visit to the waterfall, we return to the entrance and climb back up the stairs, returning to the visitors center. This really was a nice tour and a very interesting cave system. The waterfall at the end was the highlight and I would recommend a visit for anyone in the general area.