Ash Cave

Ash Cave takes its name from enormous piles of ash that early settlers found heaped beneath the overhang in the early nineteenth century. The sheltered, dry floor had clearly been used for fires over a very long span of time, and the accumulated ash was deep enough to be remarked upon and, unfortunately, largely carried off before anyone thought to study it.

The Hocking Hills were part of the ancestral homeland of the Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), and Wyandot peoples, and earlier ancient cultures used these deep rock shelters as well. The dry recess would have offered shelter and a place for fires out of the weather. Those tribes were forcibly removed from Ohio in the nineteenth century, and their descendant nations continue today, largely in Oklahoma.

The rock here is Blackhand sandstone, laid down as sand in an ancient sea and river system hundreds of millions of years ago, then compressed into stone. The sandstone is not uniform: harder, tightly cemented layers sit over softer, loosely bound ones, and that difference is the key to the whole landscape.

Water seeping through and running over the rock wears away the soft middle layers faster than the hard cap above, undercutting the cliff and leaving a great curved recess with a resistant roof overhanging a hollowed-out floor. Every rock shelter and gorge in the Hocking Hills is a variation on that same slow carving, and Ash Cave is the grandest example of it.

The gorge holds a cool, moist microclimate that feels more like the far north than southern Ohio. Eastern hemlocks, Canada yellow birch, and mosses and ferns thrive in the shade and damp, relics of the cooler climate that followed the last ice age and that survive here because the deep, shaded gorges stay cold and humid.

That green stillness draws wildlife. Warblers and other songbirds move through the canopy, pileated woodpeckers drum on the tall trees, and salamanders hide in the damp leaf litter along the stream. White-tailed deer, wild turkeys, and the occasional fox move through the surrounding forest, most of it out of sight of the busy trail.

Spring is when the waterfall runs its fullest, fed by snowmelt and rain, and the gorge greens up with fresh ferns and wildflowers. It is many visitors' favorite time, with the trade-off of muddy footing and cool, damp air.

Summer is warm and busy, and the shaded gorge stays noticeably cooler than the open country above, a genuine relief on a hot day. Fall brings crowds of leaf-peepers to the hardwood hills for the color, and winter turns the scene quiet and dramatic, with the seasonal waterfall sometimes freezing into columns of ice and the shelter dusted with snow.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.