Nickajack Cave is a large, partially flooded cave

Cave

A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. The term applies to natural cavities some part of which is in total darkness. The word cave also includes smaller spaces like rock shelters, sea caves, and grottos.Speleology is the science of exploration and study...

 in Marion County, Tennessee

Marion County, Tennessee

Marion County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of 2000, the population was 27,776. Its county seat is Jasper.Marion County is part of the Chattanooga, TN–GA Metropolitan Statistical Area.-Geography:According to the U.S...

. It was partially flooded by the Tennessee Valley Authority

Tennessee Valley Authority

The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected...

's Nickajack Lake

Nickajack Lake

Nickajack Lake is the reservoir created by Nickajack Dam as part of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The lake stretches from Nickajack Dam to Chickamauga Dam, and runs along the shores of Chattanooga, TN...

, created by the construction of Nickajack Dam

Nickajack Dam

Nickajack Dam is a hydroelectric dam in Marion County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is one of nine dams on the Tennessee River owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built the dam in the mid-1960s to replace the outdated Hales Bar Dam upstream. The dam impounds the ...

 in 1967. The entrance was originally 140 feet wide and 50 feet high. There is now about 25-30 feet of water at the entrance, so the portion of the entrance above water is 140 feet wide and 20-25 feet high. It houses a large colony of Gray Bat

Gray Bat

Myotis grisescens once flourished in caves all over the southeastern United States, but due to human disturbance, Gray Bat populations declined severely during the early and mid portion of the 20th century. At one cave alone, the Georgetown Cave in Northwestern Alabama, populations declined from...

s, an endangered species

Endangered species

An endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...

 and the water levels have posed a danger to the bat colony. The cave took its name from the Cherokee

Cherokee

The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...

 town of Nicojack/Nickajack

Nickajack

Nickajack was the name of a proposed neutral state of Unionist areas of North Alabama and East Tennessee. In the period leading up to the American Civil War there was much talk of secession made by the politicians representing wealthy plantation owners in the Black Belt. Hill country residents were...

, located between its mouth and the Tennessee River

Tennessee River

The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately 652 miles long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names...

. The town was destroyed once in 1794 by the Nickajack Expedition

Nickajack Expedition

Following a peace treaty between Cherokee and white settlers in 1777, during the midst of the American Revolutionary War, followers of the Native American chief Dragging Canoe, all of whom opposed the peace, separated from the tribe and relocated to East Tennessee. They were joined by groups of...

.

Cultural history

Nickajack Cave was mined for saltpeter

Potassium nitrate

Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with the formula KNO3. It is an ionic salt of potassium ions K+ and nitrate ions NO3−.It occurs as a mineral niter and is a natural solid source of nitrogen. Its common names include saltpetre , from medieval Latin sal petræ: "stone salt" or possibly "Salt...

 by James Orr beginning in 1800. At this time, the cave was on land owned by the Cherokee Indians and this operation was conducted with their permission. This mining continued through the War of 1812

War of 1812

The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...

. The cave was again mined for saltpeter during the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, this time by the Confederate Nitre Bureau. Page 85 of the February 6, 1864 issue of Harper's Weekly

Harper's Weekly

Harper's Weekly was an American political magazine based in New York City. Published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916, it featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor...

 shows a drawing of the cave entrance and some of the saltpeter mining and refining equipment located outside the cave. Page 285 of the January 23, 1864 issue of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper

Frank Leslie's Weekly

Frank Leslie's Weekly, later often known in short as Leslie's Weekly, was an American illustrated literary and news magazine founded in 1852 and continuing publication well into the 20th century. As implied by its name, it was published weekly, on Tuesdays. Its first editor was John Y. Foster...

 shows a drawing of the area inside the mouth of the cave, including the leaching vats and a tower that would have supported a water tank. Robert Cravens, a Chattanooga businessman, operated Nickajack Cave and his own cave, Lookout Mountain Cave

Lookout Mountain Caverns

Lookout Mountain Caverns is currently the second longest known cave in Hamilton County, Tennessee. It is mapped length of 2.481 miles places it at 361st on the United States Long Caves List....

 at the beginning of the Civil War. Soon after the war started, the operation at Nickajack Cave was taken over by the Confederate

Confederate States of America

The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...

 government. Some time in late 1863 or very early 1864, this area was occupied by Federal troops and mining ceased. Nickajack Cave was one of the largest saltpeter caves operated by the Confederate Nitre Bureau during the Civil War and, as such, was a highly strategic site, since saltpeter was the main ingredient of gunpowder. The loss of Nickajack Cave was a serious blow to the Confederacy.

Musician Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash

John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...

 visited the cave in 1968 and had a spiritual experience there that caused him to stop his habit of drug abuse

Drug abuse

Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, refers to a maladaptive pattern of use of a substance that is not considered dependent. The term "drug abuse" does not exclude dependency, but is otherwise used in a similar manner in nonmedical contexts...

. Country

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

 singer Gary Allan

Gary Allan

Gary Allan Herzberg is an American country music artist, known professionally as Gary Allan.Signed to Decca Records in 1996, Allan made his debut on the United States country music scene with the release of his single "Her Man", the lead-off to his gold-certified debut album Used Heart for Sale,...

 recorded a song about this experience on his 2005 album Tough All Over

Tough All Over

-Personnel:As listed in liner notes.*Perry Coleman - background vocals*Chad Cromwell - drums*Eric Darken - percussion*Kenny Greenberg - acoustic guitar on track 2, electric guitar on tracks 2, 7, 8 and 12*Wes Hightower - background vocals...

.

Nickajack Cave was a commercial cave, off and on, since at least 1872. At that time, a newspaper clipping dated July 2, 1872 describes tours leaving from Chattanooga on the steamer R. J. Jackson providing trips to the cave where guides would take visitors into the cave in boats. Upon exiting the cave, the visitors could catch the train from Shellmound (located directly in front of the cave entrance) back to Chattanooga. By 1927 the cave was being shown by Lawrence S. Ashley, who supposedly disappeared in the cave during exploration. His disappearance was covered by both the local Chattanooga newspapers and the New York Times. After being "lost" from August 15, 1927 through August 22, 1927, Ashley reappears, claiming that he dug his way out through a new entrance located 8 miles away. This entire episode was a hoax designed to gain publicity for the cave and increase the number of tourists visiting the cave. By the 1940s, the cave was being run by Leo Lambert, who is also known for developing nearby Chattanooga tourist attraction Ruby Falls. A cave brochure from this time period refers to the cave as "Nickajack LaCaverns". The cave closed as a commercial operation sometime in the late 1940s. In the early 1960s, before the cave was flooded, the ruins of the gatehouse were present and in concrete floors were evident in the front passages. The entrance to the cave is extremely large. There was a small lake in front of the cave fed by the stream that flowed through the cave.

To access the interior of the cave when tours were no longer being offered, visitors had to walk about one-quarter mile down a waist-deep stream that ran through the cave. There had been a cave-in at the rear of the cave that blocked off what were rumored to be miles of additional passages.

Natural history

At least three endemic species were exterminated when the cave was inundated in 1967 – the crustacean

Crustacean

Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...

 Caecidotea nickajackensis

Caecidotea nickajackensis

Caecidotea nickajackensis is a species of isopod crustacean in the family Asellidae. It was endemic to a single cave in Tennessee, and is thought to have been exterminated when that cave was flooded in 1967 by the building of the Nickajack Dam....

, the pseudoscorpion

Pseudoscorpion

A pseudoscorpion, , is an arachnid belonging to the order Pseudoscorpionida, also known as Pseudoscorpiones or Chelonethida....

 Microcreagris nickajackensis and the ground beetle

Ground beetle

Ground beetles are a large, cosmopolitan family of beetles, Carabidae, with more than 40,000 species worldwide, approximately 2,000 of which are found in North America and 2,700 in Europe.-Description and ecology:...

 Pseudanophthalmus nickajackensis.

Today, Nickajack Cave is a Wildlife Refuge

Wildlife refuge

A wildlife refuge, also called a wildlife sanctuary, may be a naturally occurring sanctuary, such as an island, that provides protection for species from hunting, predation or competition, or it may refer to a protected area, a geographic territory within which wildlife is protected...

, operated by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency

Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is an independent state agency of the state of Tennessee with the mission of managing the state's fish and wildlife and their habitats, as well as responsibility for all wildlife-related law enforcement activities...

. The cave is home to a bat colony that is estimated to number over 100,000 bats. The cave is a maternity roost where pregnant female gray bats come each spring to give birth and raise their young. There is an observation deck adjacent to the mouth, where visitors can watch the bats leave at dusk to go feed.