USA TODAY International Edition
Look out below! Tenn. caverns hold surprises
TOWNSEND, Tenn. – Near the end of a string of two-lane roads about 30 minutes south of Dollywood, the Hatfield & McCoy Dinner Show and the Titanic Museum, is the largest and most organic attraction in the Pigeon Forge/ Gatlinburg area.
Though under the radar for most tourists — only a half-dozen billboards tout Tuckaleechee Caverns —the family-owned site thrives on a word-ofmouth clientele and praise from TripAdvisor and AAA.
It also is an unlikely player in the global geopolitical conflict over North Korea: In an enormous chamber 350 feet down, sharp-eyed tourists can see sophisticated seismic equipment that tracks earthquakes and underground nuclear tests — with data going to the United Nations and available to the U.S. Department of Defense.
And up in the visitor center, a realtime monitor shows what’s rumbling within planet Earth — and where.
Family-owned underground maze
The caverns, estimated to be at least 20 million to 30 million years old, are one of the newer major subterranean finds in Tennessee. In the early 1930s, 6-year-old Bill Vananda and a friend were poking around a rural sinkhole and found a 4-foot opening that led to a network of caves.
What his grandfather unearthed, says Benjamin Vananda, was one of the largest unexplored cave systems in the eastern United States. Vananda, 37, manages the attraction.
“Our family early on bought the 200 acres around the sinkhole, as well as mineral rights — ownership of what’s below,” he says. “How far does it go? I actually don’t know. I think maybe 10% of it has been explored, and on tours you see only about 6% of that.
“There are literally millions of rooms.”
A visitor center now covers the expanded sinkhole opening. Concrete steps and walkways descend into water-carved corridors and rooms of limestone, studded with calcium carbonate deposits left by water drips.
Underground streams often parallel man-made walkways. The guided tour covers 1.5 miles. Along the way is a two-tier subterranean waterfall.
Follow the water
Flowing water is key to determining how extensive the Tuckaleechee system may be. Geologists placed tracer dyes in the underground rivers and learned the cavern aquifer extends 4 miles east to Whiteoak Sink in the isolated valley of Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
You may have to duck now and again to clear ceilings along pathways of the guided tour, which is not handicap accessible. Photography is allowed throughout but is difficult in the low light. These are “living” caverns with bats sleeping in crannies here and there.
This is not a hard-hat affair but the route can be disorienting.
“The air temperature is a constant 58 degrees year-round, and that’s determined by our distance from the equator and area elevation of 1,200 feet,” Vananda says. The water “has been tested at 98.9% pure; the residual is calcium carbonate with some traces of iron. Calcium carbonate is what you find in Tums.”
Like his father, Steven (the guy with the gray-streaked beard behind the counter), Benjamin grew up in the underground maze: “I’ve explored more of it than anyone; I’ve been to places down there no (other) human has been.”
Benjamin, 6 feet 2 inches tall, knows where to duck. He is a member of the National Caves Association and National Speleological Society. He darts on and off the walkways like a sure-footed goat, pulling out his flashlight to point out formations created by millions of years of mineral-water drip: icicle-like stalactites, stalagmites that rise from the cavern floor, pillars that form when the two merge. He says one of the chandelier formations could be the largest in the world.
The major “wow” is the Big Room, where tourists approaching from the other side of the subterranean canyon appear to be the size of ants. That chamber is 400 feet by 300 feet and 150 feet from floor to ceiling. Without a horizon, strong lighting or other typical reference points, its enormity is hard to fathom. A yodel goes a long way into a dim nowhere, and parts of the floor descend an additional 150 feet.
The Big Room could hold a 15-story building, and it is the deepest point open to the public. Its bottom is 500 to 600 feet under Little Mountain.
Listening to the rumble
The Vanandas opened Tuckaleechee Caverns in 1953. The Big Room was discovered two years later. And when the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis came along, the government installed its first seismic measuring equipment deep underground. Bill Vananda gave them nocharge permission.
When Benjamin Vananda came home after working in IT in Marysville, Tenn., he began assisting with the care of the cavern’s seismographic station.
Monitoring devices connecting to surface-level equipment that sends encrypted data to the U.N.’s Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna. A cabinet in the visitors center displays a real-time map.
Tuckaleechee is one of the few sites in eastern North America that monitors nuclear test explosions.
Richard Williams, adjunct associate professor of geophysics at the University of Tennessee, has been working with Tuckaleechee for three decades. He has a simple explanation for why underground Tuckaleechee is prime for delicate monitoring: “A lot of noise recorded is simply wind.”
Some printouts of notable seismic incidents are posted in the visitors center: details about earthquakes in Asia and California; an underground nuclear test in North Korea.
They hang just above a rack displaying M&Ms, Butterfinger candy bars, Blow Pops and beef jerky.
If you go: tuckaleecheecaverns.com.
“I think maybe 10% of (the cavern) has been explored, and on tours you see only about 6% of that.” Benjamin Vananda