It was so large, in fact, that his light illuminated nothing but water.

Three hundred feet below the surface, he crawled through a narrow tunnel, and found himself standing in an enormous, half-submerged chasm. This changed in 1905, when a 13-year old boy was exploring the cave. All throughout its history, there were legends of a great underground lake somewhere inside the vast caves, but no one knew where. Later, the caverns were used as a refrigerator for storing food in the summer, as a mine, a mushroom farm, and even as a dance hall. Pottery, weapons and jewelry from the Cherokee people have been found in rooms up to a mile from the entrance, dating back at least a thousand years. This was the first, but not the only, record of those who ventured into Craighead Caverns. It lost its way in the dark, winding passageways, wandering for several days before eventually falling to its death in a narrow crevice, leaving behind its bones and perfectly preserved paw prints for us to find thousands of years later.

And now, for a Water Rating Special Feature:Ībout 20,000 years ago, a giant Pleistocene jaguar ventured into a small opening in the mountain foothills, but soon found that this cave was far bigger than it bargained for.