In 1979 Ranger Walter Merrill of the US Forest Service discovered a chamber in an area cave that had mud-covered walls decorated with ancient Indian drawings—still moist in an environment unchanged for a thousand years. Dr. Charles Faulkner, UT archaeologist, led the team from UT that initially studied the mud glyphs. Most of the drawings appear to have been made with fingers or pieces of cane, and some may have been struck by a club, suggesting a ritualistic attempt to strike at or destroy the real object. The cave was determined to have had only ceremonial or aesthetic uses.
Anthropology Professor Jan Simek completed the first documentation of the cave in 1996 and carbon-dated the pictures, which were found to have been created around 1300 AD, known as the Mississippian Era. After the cave was documented and photographed, the cave was sealed to prevent vandalism.
Cave No. 11 was accompanied by seven hundred acres of land. The Tennessee Parks and Greenway Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving Tennessee’s natural properties, purchased the cave and surrounding land from its original owners. In March 2008 the State of Tennessee acquired the site to preserve it for future study.
Since the original identification of the mud glyphs in Cave 11 in the 1970s, other examples of mud glyph caves in the area have been discovered, documented, and photographed.