Lost Sea

The cave was named for a former owner, a Cherokee man called Craighead, and Cherokee councils met in it. Confederate soldiers mined its saltpeter, and moonshiners later hid in it. In 1905 a thirteen-year-old, Ben Sands, crawled through a small opening and found the lake, then lost the way back when rising water hid the entrance. A mushroom farm ran inside in 1939 and 1940, and a nightclub called the Cavern Tavern opened in the Big Room in 1947. It became a National Natural Landmark in 1974.

What the plaque says

Lost Sea Features of national significance include the world's largest underground lake and the rare anthodite formation (cave flowers). The cave also contains numerous other forms of stalactites and stalagmites. The bones and footprints of a giant Pleistocene jaguar have been found; the animal measured approximately 8 feet long and weighed 500 pounds.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sequoyah Birthplace Museum — 13 mi
  The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' museum on Tellico Lake, near the town where Sequoyah was born, telling how he built the Cherokee syllabary and what the Tellico Dam drowned.
• Fort Loudoun State Historic Park — 13 mi
  A reconstructed 1756-57 British fort on the Little Tennessee River in Overhill Cherokee country, besieged in 1760 and surrendered on August 9 of that year.
• Fort Southwest Point State Historic Park — 23 mi
  A reconstructed 1797 federal fort on a knoll at the meeting of the Clinch and Tennessee rivers, headquarters of Cherokee agent Return J. Meigs, a state park since July 2026.

More markers nearby

• John Crawford Vaughn — 4.1 mi
• Hiwassee College — 4.2 mi
• Estes Kefauver — 4.3 mi
• Harry Thomas Burn 1895-1977 — 6.6 mi