08/21/2026
One of Tennessee’s most remarkable waterfalls emerges from the mouth of a cave, tumbles nearly 40 feet over a limestone cliff… and then, just a short distance downstream, disappears underground again.
This is Lost Creek Falls.
Lost Creek’s cave mouth is the visible entrance to a much larger subterranean system—one shaped over countless generations as water carved its way through the limestone beneath the Cumberland Plateau.
A short but steep trail leads from the State Natural Area’s parking down to Lost Creek Falls and the surrounding karst systems—and it is one of the most stunning pockets of Tennessee to behold.
But what’s visible from the ground is only a fraction of a whole other world hidden beneath this landscape.
That’s why TennGreen Land Conservancy, The Nature Conservancy, and The Conservation Fund partnered again to protect an additional 413 acres here on the Cumberland Plateau.
Here, White County, Tennessee, holds one of the highest concentrations of caves in the United States—a vast karst landscape where streams vanish underground, travel through extensive cave systems, and reappear as springs and waterfalls, like at nearby Virgin Falls, another Tennessee treasure protected by TennGreen and our partners.
And protecting these underground treasures always begins with protecting the land above it.
Now part of Scott’s Gulf Wilderness State Park, this landscape includes mature hardwood forests, farmland, headwater streams, and critical waterways along Lost Creek and Dry Creek.
And it is protecting all of this that ensures the karst systems and groundwater that provide extensive habitat for rare wildlife are also safeguarded for future generations.
Places like Lost Creek will always remind us that conservation isn’t just about what we can see.
It’s about everything—big and small—old and new—above and below.
For more information on Tennessee conservation, visit TennGreen.org.
