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Exploring Ruby Falls near Chattanooga, TN
Rate it! Votes (1) | Comments (1) By Cheri Sicard Photos: Cheri Sicard and Ruby Falls Posted August 6th, 2007 FabulousFoods.com Recommends: Rock City Barns: A Passing Era, by David B. Jenkins, (1996, Silver Maple Press)	Rock City Barns: A Passing Era

CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, USA -- The Chattanooga area is blessed with not one, but two legendary roadside Americana attractions. That's right, in the same trip you can See Rock City and Experience Ruby Falls. Both of these classic tourist destinations (Rock City opened to the public in 1923, Ruby Falls in 1929) are family owned to this day -- a modern wonder in the age of homogenization in America brought about by a coast to coast glut of franchise restaurants and shopping malls.

Both Ruby Falls and Rock City have and do capitalize on the value of roadside advertising and billboards. Ruby Falls has over 300 roadside billboards that beckon over a 1/2 million visitors annually to its gates. In actuality, only 26% come to this timeless destination directly because of the signs, not an insubstantial number by any means. But perhaps more importantly, the roadside billboards and advertisements that Lady Bird Johnson wanted to eliminate in the 1960s have slowly become a part American history. Pieces of roadside folk art, they evoke a strong sense of nostalgia for anyone who ever traveled the highways of America from the 1930s to the present.

Visitors to these attractions span generations with parents bringing their children, who bring their children and on and on and on.

It's The Journey AND the Destination
At Ruby Falls the journey is every bit as important as the destination. Sure the 145-foot underground waterfall, ferociously pumping over 300 gallons of H2O per minute into a crystal clear pool is awe inspiring to say the least. But the mile long walk you'll take as you travel to and from the falls also contains wonders and oddities at nearly at every turn.

You'll start your journey at the top of 260-foot glass-fronted elevator that gently drops you down into a cavern within Lookout Mountain. It's the same route, more or less, taken by local explorer and cave enthusiast Leo Lambert in 1928, minus the comfort and convenience of the elevator of course.

Lambert and a group of engineers planned to dig an elevator shaft down to a cave that was known to exist in Lookout Mountain. For centuries previous, people had known of the cave, which, through the decades had been used as a campsite by Native Americans, as a hideout for outlaws and bandits, and even as a temporary civil war hospital. When the Southern Railway built a tunnel through the edge of Lookout Mountain in 1905, they simultaneously sealed off the entrance to the cave. This lack of access eventually led to Lambert forming a corporation to dig the elevator shaft that would allow the historic cave to open for tourists.

What Lambert found made everyone involved forget about Lookout Mountain Cave and its colorful multi-used past. In spite of the fact that it took 92 days to drill through the 420 feet of solid stone between the site of Lambert's proposed elevator apex and Lookout Mountain Cave below, the entrance to cave has now been permanently sealed off. About 260 feet down in the digging, Lambert felt an unfamiliar gust of cool wind. Looking for the source, he discovered a small crevice that disappeared deep into the mountain. Determined to find its source, he traveled for 17 (count them) straight hours, much of it crawling on his hands and knees while squeezing and contorting through tight spots in the crevice. He stumbled across a large cavern, filled with breathtaking rock formations and mineral deposits creating magical fairyland scenes of mystical caverns dripping in stalactites and carpeted in stalagmites. His journey culminated at the awesome underground waterfall.

When Lambert returned to the surface, his colleagues didn't believe his fabulous story. It wasn't until his wife Ruby made the journey with her husband and returned to confirm his tale that the focus of the engineers' project shifted from turning Lookout Mountain Cave into a tourist attraction to making Ruby Falls the legendary destination it is today.

Visitors on the Ruby Falls tour get an up close perspective on what it must have been like for Lambert on his first exploration of the cave, without actually having to endure the claustrophobia inducing discomfort he had to go through in order to discover this underground natural wonder. Along the trail is evidence of the small size of the original cracks and crevices Lambert had to fit through -- a mere18 inches high and four feet wide. While the tour guide points out just how small this really it, it behooves readers of this article to get a yardstick and give yourself a visual picture of what this man went through -- for 17 hours on his hands and knees (they don't make them like that anymore)!

Along the trail, the spectacular mineral formations have acquired descriptive names such as Angel Wing, Elephant's Foot and more. Some of the glistening white onyx stalagmites evoke the feeling of being in an underground ice cave, although the temperature here remains a cool 60° F year round, year after year -- in spite of the ever changing seasons outside the caves.

The sound made by the massive Ruby Falls reaches tourists' ears before the sight of it reaches their eyes -- due in no small part to the management's understanding of drama. The sounds of rushing water gradually builds to a dull roar before the tour guide stops the group before the final turn in the trail reveals the grotto that houses the falls. A complete blackout leaves the group in utter darkness while dramatic music booms from unseen nearby speakers. When the lights come on, your eyes are bombasted with one of the most spectacular natural sights ever imagined, beautifully enhanced with some creative lighting effects (without lights you would see nothing -- pitch blackness).

After a misty hike completely behind and around the cascading torrent of water, the tour retraces its steps for one last look at the magical cavern before returning to the elevator to ascend back to earth and the reality of the obligatory tourist gift shop (that no roadside attraction would be complete without) above.

Ruby Falls is located at 1720 South Scenic Highway in Chattanooga, Tennessee. For more information call 423-821-2544 or visit www.RubyFalls.com.

Lookout Mountain Attraction Discounts!
Visitors wanting to visit Rock City Gardens, Ruby Falls and ride the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway can get discounts to all three -- ask at any of the attractions' box offices or visit www.LookoutMountainAttractions.com for more details.

For additional information about visiting Chattanooga contact the Chattanooga Area Convention and Visitors Bureau at 800-322-3344 or 423-756-8687 or visit www.ChattanoogaFun.com .

	Great photos of Ruby Falls Written by: Karen McAllister Monday, 03 August 2009
	The caves here are incredible. See some cool photos from Ruby Falls.

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