Georgia Natural Wonder #151 - Glory Hole Caverns - Grady County (Part 1). 3,645

[Top Row Dawg]

Georgia Natural Wonder #151 - Glory Hole Caverns - Grady County

Glory Hole Caverns (Grady County – Southwest Border)

Well here we are on post seven of underground Georgia. Not as much time needed to post about places I have never seen or will ever probably go to. But these cave pictures are worth seeing. We talked in earlier post how the Cumberland Plateau of northwest Georgia drains rainwater through fissures into the underlying limestone, forming miles of subterranean caves in the area.The only other part of Georgia in which limestone bedrock is present is the Coastal Plain of south Georgia. Decatur County in far southwest Georgia has four caves, including Climax Caverns, which has passages totaling more than seven miles. In adjacent Grady County there are five caves, including Glory Hole Caverns, which has almost three miles of passages and is well known for its crystalline gypsum formations. Other caves are scattered through Crisp, Dodge, Dougherty, Houston, Lee, Randolph, Terrell, Turner, Washington, Wilcox, and Worth counties in the Coastal Plain.  Wooo, we get to come back to south west Georgia just for Keef. Found a site that list 5 or six more spots down here, keep this Forum going.



Our cave today is Glory Hole Caverns, which is near the Georgia/Florida border. It’s in Grady County, Georgia and in the middle of a field with a sinkhole. This cave is known for its impressive formations of crystalline gypsum. “Angel Wings” and “Granny Star” are a couple of the famous formations here. The closest town to the caverns is Cairo.


Caren stays low under the good stuff

Let me again post these super important links about spelunking in Georgia as I want these Forum Post to stand alone, so as a continued disclaimer list .....

Safety Rules of Caving
Nine listed Grotto's in Georgia (Scroll Down)
The Southeastern Cave Conservancy, Inc.
White Nose Fungus
National Speleological Society.

Again, there is very little Internet information on Georgia caves because cavers like to keep the locations secret, in order to preserve and protect the caves and the life they contain.The sport remains tight-lipped about cave entrances and maps. Still pretty exciting what I did find.


Adam gets close to the goodys

Great natural wonders in Southwest Georgia? Yep -- waterfalls that pour into the bosom of earth, vast caves that sparkle with delicate ice-like formations and creeks that disappear into the ground -- underground pools of clear water that stretch into hundreds of yards of underwater trails and underwater halls--all right here in the flat farmlands of Southwest Georgia.


The lonely photographer

Glory Hole Caverns is one of the most spectacular natural wonders in the South. It is one of Mother Nature's most beautiful works of art. Beneath a field in the midst of the flat plains of South Georgia's farmland lies one of the South's best kept secrets -- a real royal treasure. Glory Hole Caverns is a spectacular example of Mother Nature's wildly extravagant artwork. This fantastic cave is one of the most beautiful in the United States and one of Georgia's greatest natural wonders.


Quinton staying low in the Regal wiggle

These sites are among the most spectacular gems in Georgia's treasure trove of natural wonders. But don't expect to hear about them when major newspapers or magazines write about Georgia's scenic attractions. When they do write about Georgia's natural wonders, they always talk about sites in our North Georgia mountains and sometimes, almost as an after-thought, they will mention our beautiful seacoast. But never, ever, do they bother to mention any of the natural wonders of Southwest Georgia. This is especially true of our Georgia Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism -- they simply ignore the region. This despite the fact our region includes some of Mother Nature's most spectacular creations.


Woody set's up a shot

It is a natural treasure that is dying, as are all the natural wonders in this area. Without human intervention, all these natural wonders will be destroyed within a few decades. Development as a major state park could save them and use their natural beauty as a resource to bring new jobs and income to one of the poorest regions in the nation.


Quinton finds gold

Unfortunately, I took the photos to the magazine in hopes they would do an article about these wonderful natural wonders. Typically of so many journalists today, the editor wasn't from Georgia and didn't give a hoot about caves and waterfalls, much less developing something in South Georgia. She threw the costly photos away without telling me. The first photo below is one of my photos printed in a Cairo, Georgia newspaper.


Beautiful formations coat ceiling & floor

Floors and the ceilings in several areas are completely covered with calcite formations. In the above area, shallow pools of water lie atop calcite formations. Pillar formations jut from the floor to the ceiling like mounds of ice. Calcite "icicles" of every imaginable shape hang from the ceiling.


Pool of water reflects sparkling ice-like formations.

This room contains several small pools of water on the limestone rock floor. The floors of the pools are spectacularly beautiful crystal formations, giving the appearance of ice coating the floor. The beauty of the room is doubled by the reflections of formations in the water.


Calcite "flowers" decorate Glory Hole Caverns

Glory Hole Caverns is located in northern Grady County, Georgia about a half mile south of the Grady County-Mitchell County line. The entrance is set in a small sinkhole in the middle of a field alongside Hawthorne Trail (Ga. Hwy. 112) about 10 miles north of Cairo, the county seat of Grady County and about 9 miles southwest of Pelham, Ga.


Sully does some cleaning

The cave is just east of Mizpah Baptist Church, located on a side road just south of the county line.

Description

Glory Hole Caverns is one of the most beautiful caves in the South. Although its size does not compare with many of the giants, it is still a fairly sizeable cave for the Coastal Plains. The entrance today is definitely not one for the tourists! It is located in a small sinkhole in the midst of a cultivated field. A few trees remain in the sink and at its bottom lies a very small gated entrance. Soil and rotted leaves, logs, etc. overlie a mass of limestone rocks of various size. To enter now, one must go in feet first and literally "feel your way" down through the tiny shaft that constantly shifts.


Team Vinzant at the entrance

The first room's floor level has been raised because of the constant erosion of sand and mud into the cave through the entrance. In some areas, the dirt reaches all the way to the ceiling. It is a tight crawl to get into some areas because of the soil level.


Hanging out

But the crawls are well worth it. Some rooms are full of beautiful helictites ("cave flowers"), stalactites dripping from the ceilings and stalagmites building from the floors. One amazing room has a floor covered with calcite formations in shallow pools of water. A lifetime could be spent studying the formations in this room alone.

Geology

The cavern is located in limestone dated to the edge of the Oligocene and Miocene epochs, or about 7 million to 16 million years old. This is among the "youngest" land mass in the United States and as a result, the limestone is much softer and far more porous than that outside the Coastal Plains. The rock throughout the cave is full of fossilized ancient sea life.

History

Glory Hole Caverns has been known by several names over the last several decades but most frequently during this century it has been mistakenly called "Blowing Cave" in the belief that it was the historic Blowing Cave. That cave is actually about 2 miles west of Glory Hole.


Andy does some sleeping

E. H. Polleys Sr. of Columbus, Georgia was one of the first members of the National Speleological Society, a national organization devoted to cave exploration and preservation, to visit the site. Spelunkers (cavers) with the Atlanta Georgia Grotto, a local club of the NSS, later learned of the cave from Polleys and several began to explore the cave. They also published an article and photos of the cave.


Words can't describe it

In 1960, the Pelham Chamber of Commerce sent three men to look for a cave in the area which might be nice enough to develop as a tourist attraction. They visited The Water Falls ("Wilder's Cave") and what they thought was the historic Blowing Cave--but was actually Glory Hole. They reported to the Chamber that "According to all information we can get, this is the Cave and beautiful. We feel sure that everyone would be interested in seeing..." the cave they said. The Chamber then adopted a project as an official program and the word about the cave began to spread.


Like a winter wonderland

Although I was raised in the adjoining county, I knew nothing of Glory Hole until I became friends with members of the Atlanta Grotto and began caving. I was a writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the time. I later decided to hold a Thanksgiving weekend cave festival at Glory Hole and Climax Cave to help publicize the development project. Cavers came from all over the South, which helped spread the fame of the cave among spelunkers throughout the nation.


These angel wing formations are made of very pure calcite. They look like ice.

In 1965, the Southwest Georgia Area Planning and Development Commission, a regional planning organization representing 13 counties and all their cities, contracted with a Miami engineering company to prepare a feasibility report on the cave. Unfortunately, this firm had no experience with tourism development -- much less with development of a cavern as a tourist attraction. For the report, they hired two inexperienced cavers with the Florida Speleological Society, a caving club at the University of Florida, who had never seen the cave before, to do the on-site survey. Guess who they contacted and asked to take them on a tour of the site--yours truely, this webmaster.


This intricate cave formation is located in a small geode like vug in a limestone wall. It was exposed when the breakdown block detached. It is very difficult to photograph. A 35mm camera lens will not fit through the side hole. There is a hole in the rock on the bottom where I shined a light on the formation. It was awkward.


"Soda straws" took hundreds of years to form

Our webmaster catches drops of water dripping from a "soda straw" calcite formation. This type of formation has been nicknamed "soda straw" by spelunkers. Such soda straws take many decades or even hundreds of years to form.


Beautiful array of ceiling and wall formations

Webmaster is awed by dazzling display of "angel wings" and other formations covering rock walls of Glory Hole Caverns.


Formations cover ceiling and floor

Florida spelunker admires ice-like column. One of many cavers from the Florida Speleological Society in Gainesville to visit the cave in the last 35 years.

Proposed Development

Glory Hole Caverns would become one of the top attractions of this park and one of the top attractions in Georgia if the park and caverns are properly developed. Glory Hole whould be the center piece of the park and the park should have visitor facilities equal to those at Stone Mountain, Lake Lanier Islands and Jekyll Islands state parks.


This is obviously a before image (No mud)

The first item must be creation of a new entrance. The present natural entrance is at the bottom of a small sinkhole about 30 feet deep in the middle of a cultivated field. A few trees and underbrush live in the sink. The entrance is an extremely tight and very dangerous shaft surrounded by loose boulders and mud. It has been gated for several years.


You have to go to Spain to see formations like these.

A new entrance would be dug into the cave so that easy, safe entry can be made by tourists. It would have steps leading down into the cavern. This should be done so as to enter the end of one of the largest halls in the cave. This "end" is actually a mudslide caused by a roof collapse sometime in the last few hundred years. There are no cave formations in this area so the least disturbance would result by placing the entrance here.



It is strongly suggested that this mudslide be cleaned out and the roof shored up in the hope that extensive passages and rooms may be found beyond this point. This is a definite possibility, considering the size of this passageway. It could not have grown to such a size without more such passages and rooms beyond this point. Those areas might contain even more beautiful formations.


Witch's Needle

Webmaster Robert Earl Woodham is bewitched by the rare beauty of the "Witch's Needle" (left), one of the most unusual and spectacular formations in Glory Hole Caverns. It is several feet in length from the ceiling to its tip.



Delicately beautiful 'flowers' decorate the floors of several rooms in Glory Hole. They are usually in small pools of water which add to their glittering effect. Mother Nature was determined to dazzle the eyes of the beholder when she created this magnificent caverns in Southwest Georgia.



Development above ground in the Glory Hole area should be restricted solely to a visitor center, parking and gardens. NOTHING, absolutely nothing in the way of paving nor any kind of building (other than small gazebos) should be constructed within the field where the cave lies. Paving for parking areas or buildings could cause irreparable harm to the cave formations and the cave itself.



The entire field should became a "natural" gardens with intense plantings of native azaleas, palmetto palms, blooming trees such as dogwood, redbud, etc., and Southern flowers and shrubs that would provide color most of the year. Large hardwoods should not be planted as these would rob the cave formations of the water essential to their continued growth.



After entering the main formation room, it did not take long to realize why this is "Glory Hole." The ceiling is covered with thousands of brilliant white "Angel's Wings." The translucent dripping decorations made for a wonderful photography session.


Glory is famous for "Angels Wings"

After shooting photos in the main room and Pelham Palace, we went to see the other formations that the cave has to offer. Strolling through the large passages in the back took us past the "Loch Ness Monster" and the "Turtle". These passages were low on formations but large in size.



We took the "FSS shortcut" back to the sand room and passed another group in the cave to cleaning formations. Then we headed to the "Diamond Room" and observed the "Christmas Trees," and E.H.Polleys signature on the back wall, (first explorer of the cave back in 1955).


The "Christmas Trees"

Back out through the sand crawls and on to find the "Granny Star" formation. We slipped through the "Birth Canal" and crawled in zigzagging sandy tunnels to the "Tomb Room."



This section feels like it could have been inside a pyramid. After a short crawl to a rocky waiting room, we took turns climbing in to see the infamous "Granny Star." To get to the star, we had to climb a slope upward, and then drop down a narrow hole headfirst. The Granny Star is a very unique crystal formation that has an orange tint and sprawls out in all directions. It's a bit of a challenge to get twisted around just right getting in and out of this passage. Lot's of grunts and groans.


Not the Granny, but so many formations deserve a name so I dub this the Stanfill Star from Grady County.

Not many people go back to this formation, as the passage to get there is small and tight.


The Famous, and hard to reach, "Granny Star"

About 13 members of the Dogwood City Grotto were in the cave at the same time to do some clean-up work on the formations. They were there to help keep this cave a real visual treat. We managed to make it out just ahead of their group led by Bruce Brewer and Tom Stodd. Glory Hole is indeed a glorious cave worth a visit anytime you are passing through South Georgia.



OK we still want to do a tangent on Grady County so we will add a tangent post. I know we have a Cave Girl theme for these cave wonders, but a funny thing happened after I dug about 5 or six pages in on my google for Glory Hole Cavern images. Today's GNW Gals are result of Glory Hole search.


Glory Hole is not just a cave in South Georgia.