Glory Hole 
Caverns
Glory Hole 
Glory Hole Caverns is located in northern Grady County, Georgia about a half mile south of the Grady County-Mitchell County line. The entrance is set in a small sinkhole in the middle of a field alongside Hawthorne Trail (Ga. Hwy. 112) about 10 miles north of Cairo, the county seat of Grady County and about 9 miles southwest of Pelham, Ga.
The cave is just east of Mizpah Baptist Church, located on a side road just south of the county line.
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lory Hole Caverns is one of the most beautiful caves in the South. Although its size does not compare with many of the giants, it is still a fairly sizeable cave for the Coastal Plains. The entrance today is definitely not one for the tourists! It is located in a small sinkhole in the midst of a cultivated field. A few trees remain in the sink and at its bottom lies a very small gated entrance. Soil and rotted leaves, logs, etc. overlie a mass of limestone rocks of various size. To enter now, one must go in feet first and literally "feel your way" down through the tiny shaft that constantly shifts.The first room's floor level has been raised because of the constant erosion of sand and mud into the cave through the entrance. In some areas, the dirt reaches all the way to the ceiling. It is a tight crawl to get into some areas because of the soil level.
But the crawls are well worth it. Some rooms are full of beautiful helictites ("cave flowers"), stalactites dripping from the ceilings and stalagmites building from the floors. One amazing room has a floor covered with calcite formations in shallow pools of water. A lifetime could be spent studying the formations in this room alone.
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he cavern is located in limestone dated to the edge of the Oligocene and Miocene epochs, or about 7 million to 16 million years old. This is among the "youngest" land mass in the United States and as a result, the limestone is much softer and far more porous than that outside the Coastal Plains. The rock throughout the cave is full of fossilized ancient sea life.G
lory Hole Caverns has been known by several names over the last several decades but most frequently during this century it has been mistakenly called "Blowing Cave" in the belief that it was the historic Blowing Cave. That cave is actually about 2 miles west of Glory Hole.E. H. Polleys Sr. of Columbus, Georgia was one of the first members of the National Speleological Society, a national organization devoted to cave exploration and preservation, to visit the site. Spelunkers (cavers) with the Atlanta Georgia Grotto, a local club of the NSS, later learned of the cave from Polleys and several began to explore the cave. They also published an article and photos of the cave.
In 1960, the Pelham Chamber of Commerce sent three men to look for a cave in the area which might be nice enough to develop as a tourist attraction. They visited The Water Falls ("Wilder's Cave") and what they thought was the historic Blowing Cave--but was actually Glory Hole. They reported to the Chamber that "According to all information we can get, this is the Cave and beautiful. We feel sure that everyone would be interested in seeing..." the cave they said. The Chamber then adopted a project as an official program and the word about the cave began to spread.
Although I was raised in the adjoining county, I knew nothing of Glory Hole until I became friends with members of the Atlanta Grotto and began caving. I was a writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the time. I later decided to hold a Thanksgiving weekend cave festival at Glory Hole and Climax Cave to help publicize the development project. Cavers came from all over the South, which helped spread the fame of the cave among spelunkers throughout the nation.
In 1965, the Southwest Georgia Area Planning and Development Commission, a regional planning organization representing 13 counties and all their cities, contracted with a Miami engineering company to prepare a feasibility report on the cave. Unfortunately, this firm had no experience with tourism development -- much less with development of a cavern as a tourist attraction. For the report, they hired two inexperienced cavers with the Florida Speleological Society, a caving club at the University of Florida, who had never seen the cave before, to do the on-site survey. Guess who they contacted and asked to take them on a tour of the site--yours truely, this webmaster.
The report looked as if the Miami engineers were dead-set against any tourist development outside Miami. It did call for development but what they proposed was too small in scope for any real potential. I wrote articles about the study for several newspapers but local enthusiasm never materialized.
As soon as I read the report, I realized that this was not what was needed for this unique site. I decided to prepare a real development plan of my own and one which would call for a major park area to include all the natural wonders in the area. I became Information Officer for the Planning Commission while working as a writer for the Albany Herald. I told the Commission I would prepare the study at my own expense and time if they would print it. In the development plan, I called for restoring the two nearby waterfalls to their former splendor; cleaning out erosion fill in Glory Hole, The Water Falls (Hawthorne Waterfalls) and Climax Cave and opening all three caverns for tours; and development of major tourist facilities such as a convention center, lodge, pioneer village, museum of Southern Rural Life, museum of speleology, vast natural gardens, beaches, recreational facilities, golf course, pioneer farm, camp grounds, etc. and a highly landscaped parkway through the area.
Upon its release, the development plan immediately caught the attention of folks in the area and received a great deal of media coverage. I was asked to appear on several television stations to talk about the proposed park. Atlanta's WSB-TV sent a crew to do a story. The Cairo newspaper, for its first use of color photography ever, decided to print a major article on the project. The article covered the entire front page and another 1 1/2 pages, with several color pictures of the cave.
I realized that Georgia's state government would never do anything on its own for Southwest Georgia, so I dreamed up the idea of an area association composed of representatives from Grady County and three adjoining counties and the cities in them. My idea for the association was to promote the site's development by a state authority, similar to those which operate Stone Mountain, Jekyll Island, Lake Lanier Islands and the Georgia World Congress Center.
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nfortunately, the representative of the Thomas County Chamber of Commerce came with a determination to thwart such an idea. One of the first things he did was to bring in the owner of Rock City park on Lookout Mountain (once famous for hundreds of garish signs on barns all over the South) who called for minor private development. The Thomasville guy proceeded to dominate the meetings of the association until members eventually lost interest. The mayors of three cities later told me they finally quit going to meetings "...because we just couldn't get anything done because of him." They reported that every time they brought up the subject of state park status, he would interrupt and get the group off track. The association finally died out. I was told by several people that apparently there were interests in Thomasville who did not want any major job development near them because it might force them to raise their payrolls.I had moved back to Atlanta and could not attend the association's meetings. The project itself became dormant when the association became inactive.
I hope to revive this project and see Glory Hole become a major state park area.
Our webmaster catches drops of water dripping from a "soda straw" calcite formation. This type of formation has been nicknamed "soda straw" by spelunkers. Such soda straws take many decades or even hundreds of years to form.
If you like what you see on these webpages, then support the development and preservation of Glory Hole Caverns and the other natural wonders in the area. Contact your state senator, state representative and Governor Barnes and urge them to create a major state park for this area to guarantee their preservation -- and create needed jobs for the area.
Georgia Governor
State Parks Division
Division of Tourism
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