Dunbar Cave

From 1785 until 1864, more than one hundred African Americans were enslaved at the plantation that included Dunbar Cave. For these people, Dunbar Cave was a place of work, where hogs were often slaughtered at the mouth of the cave and meat, corn, oats, and tobacco were stored inside, using the chamber’s constant cool temperature for refrigeration. Plantation owner John Barker built a house near the cave’s mouth that he called the “cave house,” likely for a hired overseer to supervise work there. Work took place year-round in the cave, at its mouth, and in the rich stream bottom where the lake and wetland is today. Although no record shows enslaved workers exploring Dunbar Cave, it is very likely they did, and the cool air of the cavern would have been a reprieve from field work. It is also very possible that some of the houses of the enslaved were at the cave, and a church built early in the 19th century near the cave was later used by the enslaved population. After emancipation, when Dunbar Cave became a resort, African Americans very likely served as cave guides, as was common at tourist caves. During the late 1870s, Dunbar Cave was a segregated, privately owned resort and tourist attraction, and although African Americans had lived and worked there for nearly a century, during segregation they were permitted there only as workers. Tennessee desegregated in 1964, but the resort was abandoned not long after, and African Americans were finally given equal access to Dunbar Cave when it became a Tennessee State Park in 1973.

Clarksville, Tennessee · United States