Barns, Fake Waterfalls, and the Squeeze of a Lifetime
Years ago, if you were traveling up Highway 43 and passed by Benion Creek, you’d hit a steep curve bending sharp to the right. Sitting right in the belly of that curve stood a massive billboard—one of the only ones on the entire stretch of 43 back then. It was solid green with bold, plain white letters that simply ordered: SEE ROCK CITY.
That was it. No glossy photographs, no airbrushed family grinning from an open convertible, none of the flashy modern marketing nonsense we get bombarded with today. Just three words commanding you to go look at some rocks. It sat there for years, weathered by summer heat and winter rain, greeting you every single time you drove into town and welcoming you back on the way home.
If you didn’t see that billboard, you couldn’t miss the barns. You’d be driving through the countryside and suddenly spot a tin roof painted in towering block letters: SEE ROCK CITY. Those farmers must have gotten a free coat of paint on their barns out of the deal, because those signs were strategically angled right at the windshields of passing motorists. And then came the birdhouses—little wooden red shacks with slanted black roofs, every one of them stamped with the same three words. Aside from word of mouth, that was about the sum total of their advertising empire.
Back in those days, the interstate system wasn’t what it is today. You didn’t just hop in the car on a whim and take a casual joy ride up to Chattanooga. If you were heading that way, you had to plan the event weeks in advance. It was a genuine destination.
I still remember when our family packed up and made the trek to see both Rock City and Ruby Falls. While we were inside wandering the trails and admiring the scenery, the parking attendants were hard at work out in the lot running a guerrilla marketing operation on everybody’s bumper. They didn’t use adhesive bumper stickers back then. Instead, they had a strip of thick cardboard paper with two little pieces of bendable wire sticking out of each end. They’d wrap that strip around your chrome bumper and twist the wires tight, exactly like a twist-tie on a loaf of Sunbeam bread. When you got home, if you wanted it gone, you just untwisted the wire and tossed it. No sticky glue residue, no ruined paint, and no scraping with a razor blade. Sure, the wire might have scratched the bumper a hair, but back then cars were made of actual Detroit steel, built like tanks, and a little scratch wasn’t going to hurt anything.
Rock City itself was an elaborate labyrinth built right on top of Lookout Mountain. It was packed with stone walkways, little statues of gnomes lurking under mushroom caps, and sweeping overlooks towering above the valley. They even had a massive waterfall tumbling over the edge of the cliff. It looked impressive enough, but the whole thing was artificial—they could literally flip a switch and turn the water off whenever they felt like saving on the utility bill.
The part of the trail that truly tested family loyalty was the fork in the path. If you stayed to the left, you had to walk across a wooden swinging bridge that swayed over open air. If you took the right path, you got a solid, dependable brick bridge grounded in reality. My parents and my brother marched right onto that swinging contraption without a care in the world. There was no way in hell I was setting foot on it. I turned right, crossed the brick bridge like a sensible person, and waited on solid ground until Mama had to come hunt me down. I didn’t trust that swaying bridge then, and I don’t trust it now.
When we got back home from that trip, an old neighbor asked me which of the seven states I managed to see from the famous Lookout point. He’d heard all his life that you could spot seven states all at once up there. I looked at him dead serious and told him the truth: “There weren’t any labels on them, so I couldn’t tell you.” If you look at a roadmap, everything is neat with big printed names, but looking off the edge of that cliff, all you see is rolling green hills, trees, and the rooftops of Chattanooga.
On that same trip, we went underground to Ruby Falls. To be completely honest, I wasn’t a fan. You walked into the stone building, paid your admission, and crammed into an elevator to ride hundreds of feet straight down into the mountain. Back in those days, the tour guides made a big production about how the cave was an official fallout shelter, complete with survival food rations and emergency supplies stashed away in the dark.
Then they marched you down a damp, winding cavern path to see this subterranean waterfall dropping out of the cavern ceiling. The guide gave a whole speech about how nobody knew where the water came from, how it flowed mysterious and continuous year-round, and how geologists had tried for decades to locate the source without luck. I called bull on that from day one. They knew exactly where that water was coming from; they just needed a good mystery to sell tickets to tourists.
Years later, I made the mistake of going back to Ruby Falls. The tour had changed. They didn’t brag about nuclear fallout shelters or emergency crackers anymore. It was still the exact same underground waterfall lit up with multicolored stage lights, but the foot traffic system had gotten worse. The narrow pathway had been rearranged so the crowd going in had to squeeze chest-to-chest past the crowd coming out. The group shuffling past us on the way out wasn’t exactly fresh out of the shower—to put it politely, they smelled like a humid locker room. Once we made it back up that elevator, I decided that was my last trip down into that hole.
Rock City, on the other hand, hasn’t changed all that much over the years. They don’t wire signs to your bumper anymore, but you still wind through the rock crevices, wave at the garden gnomes, and walk out to the big overlook. The seven states still don’t have their names painted across the landscape. They did add a modern climbing wall for the kids—because apparently nature isn’t enough entertainment anymore—and they still have the famous Fat Man’s Squeeze.
That squeeze is a narrow crack where two towering rock faces sit inches apart. Walking up to it years ago, before I lost weight, the only thought running through my mind was that tomorrow’s local paper would carry the front-page headline: Fat Man Rescued From Lookout Mountain. But I sucked in my gut, turned sideways, and made it through without calling the fire department. If I fit through it back then, they need to rename it the Extra-Extra-Extra-Large Man’s Squeeze.
Most of the old roadside relics are gone now. The giant billboard on Highway 43 was torn down years back. The painted barn roofs have rusted over, collapsed into weeds, or been replaced with plain tin. Every now and then you’ll spot one of those red birdhouses hanging in someone’s yard, bought for way too much money at the gift shop—though to be fair, you couldn’t pay a bluebird enough money to actually build a nest in one.
Still, Chattanooga is a fine town to visit. It’s a peaceful place with the Tennessee River winding right through the middle of it, carrying a little bit of that old Tuscaloosa charm. If you decide to make the run up there, make it a two-day trip. Drive up, check into the Holiday Inn Express right off the interstate, spend the next day seeing the sights, and head back home.
Just skip the underground cave and make sure you hit the Tennessee Aquarium instead. Folks will tell you about the massive aquarium down in Atlanta, but the one right there on the riverfront in Chattanooga is something truly special.