Bone Cave (also Big Bone Cave or Bonecave) is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in Van Buren County,

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. It lies just off

U.S. Route 70S U.S. Route 70S (US 70S) is an alternative to U.S. Route 70 in Tennessee, U.S. Route 70 between the western part of Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville and Sparta, Tennessee, Sparta in Tennessee. It runs concurrent (road), concurrent with US 70 for s ...

northwest of Spencer and southeast of Rock Island. Its elevation is 965 feet (294 m), and it is located at (35.7750675, -85.5849782). The Rocky River passes through the community. The various forms of its names led the

Board on Geographic Names The United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) is a federal body operating under the United States Secretary of the Interior. The purpose of the board is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the federal gover ...

to decide on the official form of the community's name in 1895. The community is named for nearby Big Bone Cave, one of the most famous and historic

cave Caves or caverns are natural voids under the Earth's Planetary surface, surface. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. Exogene caves are smaller openings that extend a relatively short distance undergrou ...

s in Tennessee. Big Bone Cave was named for the discovery of a giant ground sloth skeleton in 1811 during the mining of cave dirt to be processed for

saltpeter Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with a sharp, salty, bitter taste and the chemical formula . It is a potassium salt of nitric acid. This salt consists of potassium cations and nitrate anions , and is therefore an alkali metal nitrate ...

. A post office called Bone Cave was established in 1866, and remained in operation until it was discontinued in 1977.

References

Unincorporated communities in Van Buren County, Tennessee Unincorporated communities in Tennessee {{VanBurenCountyTN-geo-stub