Ruby Falls

Lookout Mountain honeycombs with caves, and in the early twentieth century a nearby cave called Lookout Mountain Cave had been a popular attraction until a railroad tunnel sealed off its natural entrance. In the 1920s Leo Lambert set out to reach it again by drilling an elevator shaft down through the mountain from the surface.

As the crew bored downward, they broke into a small opening at a level no one had known existed. Squeezing through the tight passage, Lambert and his team crawled and climbed for hours until they emerged into a chamber holding a beautiful underground waterfall, fed by rainwater and springs seeping down through the limestone. Lambert brought his wife Ruby to see it and named the falls in her honor.

Realizing the falls were more spectacular than the older cave he had been chasing, Lambert built the attraction around them instead. Ruby Falls opened to the public at the end of the 1920s, and the stone castle building at its entrance, along with the cavern route and the elevator, made it one of the pioneering roadside attractions of the American South.

The visit begins with an elevator that descends hundreds of feet through solid rock to the cave level, where a guided walk leads deeper into the mountain. The passage winds past limestone formations built up drop by drop over long ages, stalactites, stalagmites, columns, and flowstone, many given whimsical names by generations of guides.

The trail ends in a tall vaulted chamber where Ruby Falls drops 145 feet from an opening high in the ceiling into a pool below. Lit with shifting colored light, the falling water is the dramatic climax of the tour. Because the waterfall lies so deep inside the mountain, it flows year round, fed by rain and springs percolating down through the porous stone above.

Lookout Mountain is a long ridge capped with hard sandstone over thick layers of limestone. Rainwater, slightly acidic, seeps into the limestone and slowly dissolves it, carving out the caves, passages, and chambers that riddle the mountain. Ruby Falls sits in one such chamber, and the waterfall itself is simply rainwater that has gathered above and found its way down through the rock.

The same slow chemistry that hollowed the cave also decorates it. Water dripping through the ceiling leaves behind tiny amounts of dissolved mineral, and over enormous spans of time those deposits build the icicle-like stalactites hanging from above and the stalagmites rising from the floor. Everything the tour passes is the work of water and stone acting on each other, drop by patient drop.

Because the falls are deep underground, the experience changes little with the calendar, and the cave holds a steady cool temperature no matter the weather outside. That makes Ruby Falls a fine rainy-day or hot-day destination in any month.

Spring and summer are the busiest, when Chattanooga's tourist season peaks and families tour Lookout Mountain's attractions together. Booking a tour time ahead helps on these crowded days.

Fall brings crisp weather above ground and lighter crowds, a pleasant time to pair the cave with the mountain's overlooks and the color across the surrounding ridges.

Winter is the quietest, and the constant cave temperature feels mild compared with the cold outside. Around the holidays the attraction often adds special evening events, a local tradition.

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