Cathedral Caverns

Once upon a time, Cathedral Caverns was a private roadside attraction. Today it is a first-class Alabama State Park featuring one of the premiere show caves in the Southern Appalachian region.

Tucked away in a quiet, remote cove in northeast Alabama—approximately 40 minutes east of Huntsville, near Woodville—Cathedral Caverns averages 60,000 visitors annually. Locals and visitors from around the world come for a chance to feel like a spelunker without the expense of special equipment.

The first thing visitors see is the mammoth opening. At 126 feet wide and 25 feet tall, the entrance to Cathedral Caverns is believed to be the largest among commercial caves in the world. Once inside the two-mile-long cave, those who might shy away from tight spaces may appreciate that the cave rooms are tall and wide enough so one does not feel claustrophobic. Inside, visitors pass by varied, mesmerizing formations, including the 40-foot-tall Goliath, which at one point had the record for the largest stalagmite in the world. There’s a rock outcropping resembling a caveman, two frozen waterfalls, a stalagmite called the Devil’s Broomstick—only three inches in diameter but it miraculously survived the New Madrid Earthquake of 1812—and the Stalagmite Forest, from which the attraction got its name.

Geologists speculate that the cave is between 8 million and 200 million years old. Approximately 340 million years ago, the land where Alabama is today was underneath an ancient ocean. When the African and North American continents collided, rocks underneath the seabed pushed upward, forming the Appalachian Mountains. Limestone that thrust upward was repeatedly eroded by acidic rainwater, creating cracks, streams, and openings that eventually became many of the caves in Northeast Alabama.

The entrance at Cathedral Caverns was once the middle of a larger cave, said Park Naturalist Randall Blackwood. “If you were to take a football and cut it down the middle lengthwise to the nose, that resembles the opening of the cave,” he said. “What you don’t see is the part of the football in the other direction … the part of the cave that collapsed.”

Cathedral Caverns is considered an active cave with stalagmites and stalactites still forming due to rainwater that seeps in, and to the underground river—called Mystery River—that flows throughout. Inside are stalagmites, rock formations with a base on the cave floor; stalactites that hang from the cave ceiling; and columns, where stalagmites and stalactites meet. Blackwood uses another analogy to explain the formation of these dramatic structures. “Imagine spilling Kool-Aid on a countertop, and despite drying up the mess, the sticky residue is left behind,” he said. “Repeat this process over thousands and thousands of years; that’s similar to how stalactites and stalagmites are formed.”

Because the inside of Cathedral Caverns stays cool in the summer, humans used the cave as shelter approximately 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. About 200 years ago, the Cherokee and Creek tribes utilized Cathedral Caverns for trading. There is still debate among archaeologists and historians about which tribe primarily occupied Cathedral Caverns, as the border between population centers ran along the Tennessee River and shifted over time. “When you are right on the boundary line, it moves back and forth, and it is hard to say which one was in the area,” Blackwood said.

A tourist attraction is born

The Wright family, European settlers who hailed from Kentucky and Pennsylvania, arrived in the Cathedral Caverns area in the early 1800s. Native Americans there at the time helped several of the Wright brothers build temporary shelters inside the cave until they could build more permanent homes for their families. Throughout the 19th century, different families lived inside the caverns. It was used as a saltpeter mine during the Civil War, and was occupied by the Kennamer family after their homes were burned during the war.

Based on scientific digs, archaeologists from Jacksonville State University and the University of Alabama speculate that the earliest occupant primarily settled at the front of the cave. “It was not a sacred burial ground,” Park Manager Chris Bentley said.

After the Civil War, the cave was primarily unoccupied until the mid-20th century, when an army contractor from nearby Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville named Jacob Gurley saw opportunity there. Gurley and his co-worker and friend, William Varnedoe Jr., had heard about the cave through historical accounts and in 1952 explored it.

Gurley decided to put his life savings into buying the land and making the cave accessible for public use, thinking he could turn the unique structure into a tourist attraction. “This project became his bread and butter,” Bentley said.

At the time it was called Bat Cavern, and it took several attempts for Gurley to convince his wife, Helen, to enter. Once inside, she said it looked like the inside of a cathedral. “The formations reminded her of an old church bell or an old pipe organ,” tour guide Brodie Fortner said.

Gurley took Helen’s suggestion and changed the name to Cathedral Caverns.

Enhancing the allure

Between 1954, when Gurley first started giving tours to the public, and 1958, when the cave fully opened, he and crew members carved paths for accessibility. They added portable lights while trying to not damage natural features inside the cave. “He tried his best not to disturb the cave,” Bentley said.

The most significant effort to ease access was to blast away a limestone blockage between the front and back of the cave to allow for more free-flowing visitor traffic. Gurley also built a welcome center with snack bar and gift shop. He ran several marketing promotions to promote Cathedral Caverns, including driving a convertible down inside the cave’s path to illustrate its vast size.

Despite national attention and a designation in 1972 as a National Natural Landmark, Gurley faced troubles with debt and the fact that the state inadvertently cut off tourist access. “The state was doing road construction, and with the road closed people could not get to the cave… “ Bentley said.

Gurley sold Cathedral Caverns in 1974. The new owner tried to enhance the destination, including turning it into a bluegrass park with live music. The efforts proved futile, and Cathedral Caverns went out of business in 1986.

After sitting empty for a year, the state of Alabama purchased Cathedral Caverns in 1987. With Gurley’s input, the state made plans to turn the cave into a state park.

One improvement the state made was to pour concrete walkways on Gurley’s original packed-dirt paths. “Very few caves had concrete on any length of the paths at the time,” Blackwood said. “It was cutting edge.” Another modification was the addition of a bridge over the Mystery River to prevent the path from being flooded during heavy rain.

A geological jewel

Gurley died in 1996 before seeing Cathedral Caverns formally become a state park. Still, work continued throughout the 1990s to get it ready. The state requested help from the Huntsville Grotto, an organization dedicated to the study, protection, and exploration of caves, to get accurate measurements inside the cave. The state also allowed Walt Disney Studios to shoot scenes inside the cavern for the 1995 movie “Tom and Huck.”

In May 2000, Cathedral Caverns State Park opened to the public, and a new visitor’s center was added in 2003.

Visitors can take a 90-minute guided tour inside the cave and soak in the inspiring natural formations. Bentley said the pathways make a tour of Cathedral Caverns easily accessible. “The cave is stroller-friendly,” he said. Those with wheelchairs or other mobility issues can make arrangements in advance to ride in a golf cart, though other members of the party must walk.

Tours can only accommodate 60 people at a time, so reservations are strongly recommended. Weekends are very busy and tours sell out on holiday weekends and during summer months, Bentley said.

The park has cabins and a campground with full-service, basic and primitive sites. Visitors can enjoy more than five miles of trails and a gem mine, including Tom’s Mine, an ADA-accessible mine named after the park’s former maintenance supervisor. “We named the mine after him because it was one of the last big projects he completed” before dying of Covid-19, Bentley said.

The park offices are closed and no cave tours are available on Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. However, the campground, cabins, and trails remain open on those days.

Bentley said more people are discovering the caverns and are using the park as a base for visiting Huntsville-area attractions and other parks in the region. “It’s such a hidden gem,” Bentley said. “We are starting to see people come and make Cathedral Caverns a destination rather than pulling through and staying only overnight.” Future plans for the park include expanded primitive camping and picnicking areas.

Cathedral Caverns’ mission is to preserve and promote lands for future generations. Bentley said people of all ages can enjoy the same spectacular cave that fascinated Gurley and those that came before him.

Many say there is a near-spiritual sensation when one stands inside, dwarfed by the sheer size of Cathedral Caverns. “We call it God’s artwork, because you won’t see this just anywhere,” Bentley said. Thanks to its second chance as a state park, Cathedral Caverns is a geological jewel ready for exploration.