Fall Creek Falls State Park

Tennessee

Fall Creek Falls State Park, near Spencer, Tennessee, sits at the west edge of the Cumberland Plateau on a deposit of Mississippian Period limestone that was deposited more than 300 million years ago.

It was our last trip before I bought my motorhome. It was a day trip. We only saw one thing: the Scenic Loop Road.

Fall Creek Falls in the Tennessee State Park of the same name

The first stop on that road is the waterfall for which the park is named. It’s a looker for sure. There is a trail to the bottom.

A few hundred yards downstream, Fall Creek flows into Cane Creek. Here’s a view down Fall Creek’s canyon:

Fall Creek’s canyon downstream of the falls

If you look closely, you can see a woman standing on that limestone bluff. There’s a trail over there called the “Overlook” trail. I didn’t take it. Here’s a wide view:

Wide view of Fall Creek canyon

This is an Eastern US hardwood forest. I never took the time to look at it up close and appreciate it; I never realized how pretty it is until I post-processed these photos, decades later. It might be the one place east of the Rockies that I’d be willing to visit again.

The Scenic Loop Road is a one-lane, one-way paved road that goes along the top edge of the cliffs.

The Scenic Loop road. One lane, one way. But it’s paved!

Here’s the next viewpoint:

Viewpoint along Scenic Loop Road

From which you can easily see the layer of limestone across the Cane Creek canyon. This rock was laid down in the Mississippian Period, which lasted from 359 million years ago to about 323 million years ago when the area was covered by an ocean. Limestone is calcium carbonate, formed from the bodies of sea creatures. Here is a bluff of the stuff:

Limestone bluff in Fall Creek Falls State Park

Continuing around the Scenic Loop, we come to Millikan’s Overlook, at the far end of the loop:

Millikan’s Overlook, and Buzzard’s Roost on the right

There is a trail over to Buzzard’s Roost, which you can see in the photo. Dr. Millikan was a Vanderbilt University professor who fell to his death while rock climbing here half a century ago.

There is one more viewpoint on the Scenic Loop road:

Piney Creek Falls

At this point, the Scenic Loop is on its way back to the rest of the park.

By this time, I had lived in Tennessee almost three years. I was so tired of the place that I didn’t really appreciate the beauty of this park. I bought a motorhome a month later, and moved away for good when spring came. That story is told in the series of posts here starting with The Road Trip That Changed My Life .