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Ruby Falls

Photo: Yinan Chen / Public Domain (CC0)

🕳️ Caves

Ruby Falls

Chattanooga, TN · Lookout Mountain

About

Ride a glass-front elevator 26 stories down inside Lookout Mountain, then follow a winding passage past stalactites, columns, and rippled flowstone to the payoff: a 145-foot ribbon of water dropping through a dark limestone shaft, the tallest underground waterfall open to the public in the country. Leo Lambert found it by accident in 1928 while digging toward another cave, and named it for his wife Ruby. The falls get lit in shifting blues and greens at the end of the trail, which sounds gimmicky until you are standing 1,120 feet under the surface watching it come down.

Highlights

Tallest underground waterfall open to the public in the US, dropping 145 feetGlass-front elevator descends 260 feet into the mountainLantern-era cave passage lined with stalactites, columns, and flowstoneColored lights illuminate the falls 1,120 feet below the surfaceDiscovered by accident in 1928 and named for Ruby Lambert

Getting there

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Part of these collections

Curated guides that feature Ruby Falls.

America's Best Caves22 places

America's Best Caves

Step out of the daylight into another world: the longest cave on the planet in Kentucky, a desert chamber big enough to swallow a stadium in New Mexico, an underground waterfall in Tennessee, and a living crystal cavern in Arizona. Some you walk, some you ride a boat through, and one you crawl with a headlamp. America's great caves and caverns, from the national parks to the lantern-lit show caves.