The country’s largest underground lake is just 2 hours from Atlanta
You’ll be able to take a ship journey on this Tennessee lake and never have to fret about getting a sunburn.
The Misplaced Sea, America’s largest underground lake and a registered nationwide landmark, is about two hours up Interstate 75 in Sweetwater.
It’s a part of an in depth cave system referred to as Craighead Caverns and was just about unknown till 1905, when “a 13-year-old boy named Ben Sands wiggled by the tiny, muddy opening 300 ft underground and located himself in an enormous room half full of water,” its web site states.
A go to to the Misplaced Sea begins with a guided tour of the caverns, that are about 58 levels all yr. Throughout the tour, guides will let you know of the caverns’ historical past, together with the way it was as soon as utilized by the Cherokee Indians and the way Accomplice troopers mined it for saltpeter to make gun powder.
On the backside of the cave, you’ll board a glass-bottomed boat to discover the lake, which covers greater than 4 acres. Though the seen a part of the lake is 800 ft lengthy by 220 ft huge, its full extent remains to be not recognized.
In line with the web site, one of many cave’s earliest guests was a large Pleistocene jaguar whose tracks have been discovered deep contained in the cave.
About 20,000 years in the past the animal apparently misplaced its manner and fell right into a crevice. A few of its bones, found in 1939, are on show within the American Museum of Pure Historical past in New York. Others, together with plaster casts of the tracks, are among the many displays on the customer heart.
Along with the caves and lake, you may discover the Misplaced Sea Nature Path, and go to the final retailer, ice cream parlor, gem mine and glassblower.
Misplaced Sea
140 Misplaced Sea Street, Sweetwater, TN 37874
Tickets price $23.95 for adults and $13.95 for ages 4-12. Youngsters 3 and youthful are free.
This story involves Tough Draft Atlanta by a content material partnership with The Atlanta Journal-Structure.
