DeSoto Caverns

Named for the famous Spanish explorer who traveled through this area in 1540, DeSoto Caverns has offered shelter for native Indians for centuries, including a 2,000-year-old Woodland Period burial excavated by archeologists in the mid-1960s, became the first officially recorded cave in the U.S. in 1796, and served as a Confederate gunpowder mining site during the Civil War. One of the largest show caves in the southeastern U.S., its main room stands 12 stories high and is as large as a football field, and its onyx-marble stalagmites and stalactites are among the most concentrated accumulations in America.

Alabama · United States