Manitou Cave on Lookout Mountain near Fort Payne, Alabama, holds an unusually layered history. In the early 1800s it stood within the Cherokee settlement of Willstown and was associated with Sequoyah as he developed the Cherokee syllabary; the cave still preserves Cherokee inscriptions, including writings by his son recording ceremonial and culturally important events. After Cherokee removal in the 1830s, the cave served other purposes, including saltpeter mining for the Confederate Army during the Civil War, designation as a Cold War fallout shelter, and operation as a tourist attraction from 1888 into the 1970s. Since 2015, preservation efforts have protected both this sacred historic place and the only known habitat of the Manitou Cave snail.