Higgenbotham's Cave

The cave that Aaron Higginbotham found in 1810 on Cardwell Mountain is now Cumberland Caverns, which opened as a show cave on July 4, 1956. A legend says Higginbotham was the first to enter and was lost for three days after his torch went out. The mountain's other history is darker. Cherokee (Tsalagi) families driven west on the Trail of Tears in 1838 came down it by the road Higginbotham built, and Cardwell Mountain is now one of the state's archaeological parks.

What the plaque says

Higgenbotham's Cave Located in Cardwell Mountain, two miles north, the cave was discovered in ca. 1810 by Aaron Higgenbotham, early surveyor and turnpike builder. For over a century the cave has been renowned for its vastness and rare formations. Higgenbotham built a road nearby, over which Cherokees descended the mountain while on the Trail of Tears in 1838. During the Civil War saltpeter was mined in the cave for the manufacture of Confederate gunpowder.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rock Island State Park — 12 mi
  A park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.
• Savage Gulf State Park — 14 mi
  Roughly 19,000 acres of gorge and sandstone bluff on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, a state park of its own since 2022, with the Stone Door and a National Natural Landmark.
• Fall Creek Falls State Park — 19 mi
  A New Deal park on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, where Cane Creek has cut a gorge and a 256-foot waterfall drops into it.
• Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park — 26 mi
  A 2,000-year-old enclosure of piled stone and earth on the bluffs above the forks of the Duck River, built by Native people between about 80 and 550 A.D., with a museum and waterfall trails.

More markers nearby

• Bernard School — 5.1 mi
• Carl T. Rowan — 5.2 mi
• Anthia Brady Hughes 1868-1949 Willie Huges 1895-1986 — 5.2 mi
• Morgan's Headquarters — 5.5 mi