We stayed for a week in Clarksville, TN and while there we found that there is a cavern right in town! So we decided to visit it.
This cavern system was used for over 1,000 years by native Americans and they did some rock painting. It is thought that the cavern was used for warrior initiation, where a warrior had to go in a certain distance, probably more than a mile. Some places were very tight and required crawling on bellies. Some of the symbols seem to represent a warrior on his side with a headdress on. Some seem to indicate the sun and moon. The cavern is still visited by native Americans elders who bring young tribe members to connect with their heritage. Because this cavern is still used by native Americans and is considered sacred there is no photography allowed inside and the tour is by flashlight (bring your own or buy one) so they can control the lighting to avoid further degradation of the ancient pictographs.
The cavern was discovered by white men before the Civil War and extensive digging during the war was done to expand parts of the cave to use for storage and for soldiers to rest and hide.
From the Civil War to the 1960s the cavern was owned by various people and visitors were encouraged to break off a piece of stalactite for a souvenior and to write on the walls. Lots of graffiti!
A country singer Roy Acuff, owned it for about 20 years in the 60s and 70s and held concerts at the opening which was enlarged and paved to be an ampitheatre.
The tour had a couple of spots where we all had to stoop over to get through, which made me nervous but I did ok. Unfortunately at one point where there was a slope and it was muddy I slipped and fell onto my left hip. Didn’t really hurt me and surprise! my right hip which had been hurting me for a few weeks stopped hurting! I had seen a chiropractor twice in the past couple of weeks but it didn’t seem to help. After a few days the pain in my right hip came back but one more trip to a chiropractor seemed to fix that, no more pain – so far.
One large room had weird shapes showing in the roof, I thought they were fish fossils. Turns out I was right but 10m years old!
It was very cool and humid inside the cave (around 56 degrees) and when we came out of the cave into the ampitheater where it was quite warm and very humid everyone’s glasses fogged up, so we all spent a few minutes cleaning our glasses so we could see again.
No pictures though! Not even any on the website from inside the cavern. Here’s a picture of the ampitheater:
