Crystal Cavern

This article is about the Alabama cavern. For other caverns, see Crystal Cave.

Crystal Cavern, also known throughout the years as Alabama Caverns and McCluney Cave, is a small cavern containing crystal formations located in Clay, Alabama, USA. According to the landowner Larry Shirley, the cavern was once open to the public as an attraction in the 1920s, and there is still the foundation of the old gift shop at the base of the mountain.

The cavern has a large amount of corrugated tin and old Department of Defense water canisters inside the cavern. In places, the acoustics can make it sound like there is rushing water or even machinery on the other side of some of the walls.

Cleanup effort and takeover

In the late 1980s, an effort to clean the cavern was made by a group of friends, who hauled a generator, shop-style vacuum, and other cleaning equipment into the cave for three days of intense cleaning, mostly of trash left by visitors and dust covering most of the interior crystal formations. As a result of this effort, renewed crystal formation was reported (but not verified) before the road leading back to the cave was blocked with steel gates bearing Alabama Power signs in 1990. According to Shirley, the operators failed to inform the owners, who lived in Texas, that they had opened a business on the property.

See also

• List of caves in the United States