Exploring Manitou Cave with friends in modern-day Fort Payne, AL which is historic Willstown.

Caption excerpt from Jared Ragland:

Inside Manitou Cave traces of human activity date back 10,000 years. The cave also includes inscriptions from the Cherokee syllabary, invented by Sequoyah while he lived in Willstown in the early 1800s. After the Cherokee removal on the Trail of Tears the cave was used as a Confederate encampment and saltpeter mine; in the 1920s it was converted into a tourist destination where flappers danced the Charleston in a “ballroom” that featured electric lights; and during the Cold War it was outfitted as a fallout shelter. After decades of neglect the cave is the focus of grassroots historical and environmental protection and in 2016 was listed by the Alabama Trust for Historic Preservation as one of the state’s “Places in Peril.”