Ochlocknee Falls has most often been known by the simple name "The Water Falls". When the Atlanta Journal wrote several articles about the falls in the 1930's, it was referred to as "Waterfall Cave" and the same newspaper referred to it in the 1950's as "Maloy's Cave" after a former owner of the land.

This limesink is extremely rare in South Georgia, for its walls are exposed limestone rock. Most limesinks in the region have dirt walls because the overburden of soil is very deep in most of the area. A small waterfall spills into the rocky crevice and disappears into a gapping cavern at the bottom of the pit. Huge rock boulders cover the floor about 55 feet and more below the falls. Beyond this, the pit sinks gradually another 50 feet or more into the entrance of the caverns.

It is a spectacular sight to come upon the sink in the farmland of the flat plains of South Georgia and witness the falls dropping into the deep pit -- then disappearing into the cavern below. Soil slopes down several feet to the edge of the pit. The walls of the pit are lined with hard limestone rock, adding to the natural beauty of the falls. Visitors from Atlanta and other northern areas always remark that it "looks like the north Georgia mountains". Well, folk, those mountains up nawth don't have the palm trees, palmettos and fabulous live oaks and magnolias that were common around here when the first pioneers came!

The drop of the falls apparently was once much higher -- or deeper, literally depending upon your perspective. Boulders of rock have fallen from the walls to the bottom of the sink over the centuries, raising the floor level by as much as 50 feet or more.

IF we can ever get our state government to develop these natural wonders, some of these boulders could be cleaned out of the pit, thus increasing the "height" of the waterfalls. The boulders could be used in landscaping throughout the park.

Location

Ochlocknee Falls is located in northern Grady County, about nine miles north of Cairo and west of Hawthorne Trail, the Camilla-Cairo highway (Ga. Hwy. 112). It is about 230 miles south of Atlanta, Ga. and about 50 miles north of Tallahassee, Florida.

Geology

Limestone in this area is among the youngest land mass in the eastern United States. It has been described in several bulletins of the Georgia Geological Survey. The limestone has been dated to the meeting period of the Oligocene and Miocene epochs, or about 7 million to 16 million years old. Below surface, this rock is very "soft" but when exposed to surface atmosphere it hardens and darkens in color.

When the surface cover of trees and undergrowth is cleared, this immediately weakens the limestone rock below, causing roofs of caves to collapse. This has happened repeatedly over the centuries and in the case of Ochlocknee Falls, you can see the evidence of several ancient falls sites between the present sinkhole and the valley rim to the west. This apparently was once a very vast cavern system.

Formations in the cave at the Falls. The caverns are one of the three largest caves in Georgia south of Atlanta. At this site, you have two great natural wonders at one location -- a beautiful waterfalls and a cave that would awe any tourist.

History of the Falls

This falls and cave have been known by several names over the years but has usually been called simply "The Water Falls". In numerous published records and newspaper articles, I have found it referred to as "The Water Falls". The name invariably always with the word "The" as part of the name and capitalized -- as if our South Georgia ancestors were arrogantly letting the rest of the country know that this was THE water falls, bar none!

A feature article in the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine in 1933 refers to the site as "Waterfall Cave". The Atlanta Journal printed several articles about the site in the 1930's. During the 1950's, some cavers from Moultrie, Ga. called it "Maloy's Cave" after I. E. Maloy who owned a farm around the site. Their visit to the site became the subject of a feature in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday Magazine in 1955.

Lime Sink Georgia Militia District

For almost 200 years, Georgia's counties have been divided into militia districts. These political subdivisions were created to provide even more localized government such as inferior courts, justice of the peace courts, magistrates, etc. These districts are numbered and named. They were supposed to have enough adult male population to supply one company to the Georgia Militia and thus the name "militia districts". The district surrounding Ochlochnee Waterfalls has been known as Lime Sink District for well over 100 years.