Forbidden Caverns is in SEVIERVILLE, about ten miles out of town under English Mountain — a guided cave tour past formations growing roughly an inch every 100 to 150 years, to the remnants of a moonshiners' still that ran down here for over twenty years. Only 2 qualifying films exist, both narrated keepers; the page publishes at two rather than borrow footage from any other cave. (Tuckaleechee Caverns, in Townsend, is a different cave with its own page in the Gatlinburg set.)
Watch: the films
2 videos · summaries from the actual guidesThe name
Visit My Smokies' inside look has a guide explain it: Cherokee legend held the cave a forbidden passage to the underworld. The same film covers the cave's second life as a school field-trip staple — groups of a hundred kids in spring and fall. The caverns are seasonal, roughly April through late November, per the wave's venue check.
Cold air at the door
Yankee in the South's 2019 tour felt the cold air rolling out of the entrance hall before descending — and stopped first at the 1880 Blowing Cave Mill being restored by the roadside, a bonus the drive gives you. Lunch afterwards is at the Bush's Best Family Cafe in Chestnut Hill, which has its own page in this set; the pairing is the day these films describe.
A small, complete record
Two films, both tours, no filler. If more full tours of Forbidden Caverns are published, this page grows; until then it stands as the cave's complete long-form record.
Sources: the 2 videos on this page — the complete qualifying record — filmed at Forbidden Caverns in Sevierville in 2014 and 2019.
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