
If you love geology, you’ll certainly enjoy the tour. Parts of the caverns have massive rooms and ceilings. Many of these formations have taken thousands of years to grow to their current size. There are all kinds of rare formations throughout the caves that your guide will show you and point out. The majority of the tour is on solid ground amongst the vast cave system that is part of Craighead Caverns.

Divers have attempted to explore underground tunnels that protrude from the lake but have not been successful in mapping out how big the lake is. The visible part you see on the tour is 800 feet long by about 200 feet wide and around 75 feet deep. To this day, no one knows how big the lake is. He did end up finding it but no one believed him until decades later when explorers found the same lake. It wasn’t until 1905 when a 13-year-old boy, Ben Sands, set out to find the rumored lake at the bottom of the caverns. Before that, settlers made use of the constant 58-degree temperature in the caves to store their produce. Many Cherokee artifacts have been found that point to this history.ĭuring the Civil War, Confederate soldiers mined the caverns for saltpeter, which was used to make gunpowder. The caverns are huge and have been in use since the days of the Cherokee tribe, who often used the caves to hold councils. The Lost Sea is the country’s largest underground lake that you get to see when you tour the extensive caverns. An underground lake.ĭid it live up to my expectations? Oh yeah, it did. I actually keep a running list of all the cool things I want to do and places to go and this one had been on my list for the past couple of years because it is legitimately a crystal clear, cold lake 150 feet underground amongst creepy and cool caverns. Columbia, SC: Visit Kidding Around ColumbiaĪlways looking for my next adventure, when I heard of the Lost Sea just outside Knoxville, Tennessee, I knew I had to go.
#Lost caves tn free


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