Savage Gulf is 15,590-acre class II natural-scientific state
natural area located in Grundy County Tennessee. It is carved like
a giant crowfoot into the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau,
it is one of Tennessee's most scenic wilderness areas, and it
boasts some of the wildest topography to be found east of the Rocky
Mountains. The sheer sandstone cliffs and rugged canyons provide
extraordinary views. Savage Gulf has been carved out by the Collins
River, as well as by Big Creek and Savage Creek. All of these
streams flow underground in places, though when the rain gets heavy
excess water is forced across the surface.
Breathtaking waterfalls form at the head of many gorges, where
streams drop off over hard caprock. Collins River and Ranger Creek
have waterfalls that drop over limestone ledges and flow into sinks
where they disappear. Big Creek, Collins River and Savage Creeks
each tumble down over 5 miles, dropping over 800 feet through
narrow gorges, forming the "Gulfs." Observed from a 750 overlook,
Big Creek mysteriously disappears below. Many other big streams go
underground cutting through shale and limestone to form dry creek
beds.
When the African and North American continental plates collided,
layers of rock were squeezed upward to form the Appalachian
Mountains. To the west, that same squeeze and uplift created a huge
plateau, or tableland. That tableland is now known as the Allegheny
Plateau in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, and as the Cumberland
Plateau from eastern Kentucky south through central Tennessee and
northeastern Alabama.
The Cumberland Escarpment is between the Highland Rim Plateau at
the bottom, and the Cumberland Plateau at the top. This veritable
wall of rock begins deep in Alabama, and runs Northeast across
Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Hard layers of Sandstone
(Cumberland) and Chert (Highland Rim) sandwiching 1000 feet of
porous limestone form the Flat Plateaus. In between, the escarpment
is an extremely steep slope topped by 100 - 200 feet of sheer rock
face. A significant feature of this escarpment is the Stone Door, a
10 ft. wide by 100 ft. deep crack, forming in the sandstone from
the top of the escarpment into the gorge below.
Viewed from the air, Savage Gulf looks like a giant footprint,
with five deep canyons radiating from a central point. The
canyons--or gulfs, as the local people call them--are each about
five miles long and 800 feet deep and are rimmed almost
continuously by sheer sandstone cliffs. Only at the Stone Door--a
ten-foot-wide crack in the rim--can you make your way down to the
bottom of Savage Gulf. Generations of travelers, going back to the
Cherokee and Chickamauga Indians, have negotiated the rough
scramble down to the creek.
Pre-European North America had a thriving trade in the materials
of Stone Age technology. And much of the trade between present day
Florida, Georgia, Eastern Alabama, the Carolina's, and the Central
part of the continent was funneled through this tiny crack in the
cliffs. As a result, the Collins River Valley, a backwater today,
was a bustling culture, and a commercial center. Artifacts are
incredibly abundant, almost none made from locally native
materials.
To get credit for finding this cache you need to find your way
to the Stone Door entrance area and then hike to the feature so
named. You will then need to take a picture of yourself with GPS in
hand and upload it with your log. Any logs without pictures of you
with your GPS will be deleted.
Update: To meet the new EC guidelines you must now email
me how long the door is. You can estimate this by counting your
paces as you walk through the door, or you can take GPS waypoint at
each end and calculate the distance
Email Me here.
Sources:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_9_111/ai_93611624
http://www.extremeultrarunning.com/stonedoor.htm
http://www.state.tn.us/environment/nh/natareas/savage/
