Sweetwater, Tennessee - The Lost Sea

An interesting place to visit, though I agree with the comment that the official website hypes it way too much. The water was indeed murky and I felt sorry for the trout. Still, the geology and human lore of the place is worth knowing.

Because it has had fairly constant use over many centuries, many of the formations one expects to see have been damaged. The company offers a Wild Tour that apparently takes you to less visited spots in the cavern.

Next to the cave tour is a small "village" with a gift shop, glassblower, smithy demo, and "gem mining" (buy a bag of dirt and run it through the sluice.).

The village closes 2 hours earlier than the cave tour, so visit it first.

It's also in the Eastern Time Zone, so we were expecting another hour to visit since we came from the Nashville area to see it. Adjust your watches early so you won't be surprised. [Karen R.from Utah, 07/31/2008]

The glass bottom boat ride onto the lake is still not available due to the drought. The lake is down 29 feet and the floating dock has pulled away from even the temporary walkway that was built a year or so ago.

However, they have opened up another section of the cave to tours in compensation. Since the area is not lit like the other area that are part of the normal commercial tour, they hand out lanterns before heading into that section.

All in all, still worth a visit. [Heather Casey, 01/11/2008]

[RA: May 2008: Danny writes "The glass bottom boat ride on the lake is once again open. From what I could tell the tour is back to its original content."]

A year-long drought in eastern Tennessee has reduced the water in The Lost Sea -- a cave lake turned into a tourist attraction -- to its lowest level since it opened to visitors in 1963. The lake has been around a lot longer than that, of course, but the Indians didn't have to worry about lengthening the dock (so that the tour boats don't get beached) or lowering the underwater light bulbs (so that they remain underwater).

The attraction notes with delight that attendance is actually up this year, often from people curious to see what the mini-Sea looks like, and that the 20-foot drop in the water level has made parts of the cave visible for the first time ever. The 300 rainbow trout that live in The Lost Sea can't be very happy, although visitors now have a much better chance of spotting them.

Lemons into lemonade, in aptly named Sweetwater, Tennessee. [RoadsideAmerica.com Team, 10/02/2007]

My brother and I first visited The Lost Sea as young teen-agers in the 1970s. We liked it so much (for very different reasons) that we revisited it last week. We were very disappointed in our trip, as the lake is 15 feet low and the water so murky that you couldn't see anything. The "glass bottom" boat provided no visibility at all. We advise others to ask about the lake's water level and the clarity of the water before visiting. [Sarah Morgan, 07/17/2007]

The caves were very interesting, and the guide very knowledgeable and amusing. We took many pictures with our digital camera, but because our camera did not have a setting for taking pictures at night, most of them were not usable.

The lake itself was ten feet low and has been that way since last October, according to the guide, due to lack of rain (since the lake is fed by ground water). Because the lake is low, the lights that are usually several feet under water (making it possible to see the fish) were just above water level leaving the water itself very dark and murky looking. The few fish that we saw were dim shadows nearest the lights. We did hear them splashing and jumping out of the water, but we could not see them.

Several visitors mentioned that the boats stank like an old nasty aquarium (because of wet carpet in the boat bottoms).

On a whole we enjoyed the adventure, even though we were disappointed in the lake itself. When we go again we will call beforehand to ask the water level of the lake -- and if it is still low, we will wait until another time. [Suzan Curtis, 08/13/2006]