Devilstep Hollow Cave is a natural limestone cave located within

Justin P. Wilson Cumberland Trail State Park The Justin P. Wilson Cumberland Trail State Park, commonly known as the Cumberland Trail, is a Tennessee hiking trail following a line of ridges and gorges along the eastern escarpment of the Cumberland Plateau and Cumberland Mountains in Tennes ...

. The cave, part of the Mill Cave System, drains Grassy Cove, which is the largest sinkhole in North America. It contains numerous instances of

Mississippian Mississippian may refer to: * Mississippian (geology), a subperiod of the Carboniferous period in the geologic timescale, roughly 360 to 325 million years ago *Mississippian culture, a culture of Native American mound-builders from 900 to 1500 AD ...

era Native American

cave art In archaeology, Cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin, and the oldest known are more than 40,000 ye ...

. The entrance is 125 feet by 150 feet. The cave stream forms the nearby Head of Sequatchie spring, the source of the Sequatchie River.

Artwork

The artwork within Devilstep Hollow Cave was created by the Mississippian culture, and contains 22 known images.These include woodpeckers, fish, and an image of the falcon man. The glyphs are thought to be around 1,100 years years old.{{Cite journal , last=Faulkner , first=Charles , date=December 1997 , title=Four Thousand Years of Native American Cave Art in the Southern Appalachians , url=https://caves.org/wp-content/uploads/Publications/JCKS/v59/V59N3-Faulkner.pdf , journal= Journal of Cave and Karst Studies , volume=3 , issue=59

References

Caves of Tennessee Caves containing pictograms Caves of the United States Mississippian culture