Pettyjohn’s Cave was first established by a land survey conducted in 1969 by Richard Schreiber which surveyed over 5,000m of land in the area. In the same year following the survey, the Crockford-Pigeon Mountain Wildlife Management area was established which protects over 20,000 acres (about the area of Manhattan) of land including various wild caves such as Pettyjohn Cave, Ellison’s Cave, and Anderson Spring Cave. The cave was named after John Pettyjohn who was the original landowner of the cave.
The cave is made up of karst and falls on the east side of Pigeon Mountain. The karst is the most common bedrock on the Appalachian Plateau and in northwest Georgia and primarily consists of limestone from the Paleozoic age. These caves which frequent the Appalachian plateau and ridge are formed by acidic groundwater slowly dissolving the limestone over time. The county that Pettyjohn’s cave lies in, Walker County, holds 149 caves due to this geologic process.
The cave is what is known as a “sacrifice cave” because it is open to recreational cave explorers and trekkers and therefore protects other caves in the area by attracting traffic to this one. Therefore, it is an extremely heavily trafficked cave. The entrance of the cave is quite spacey measuring at 10m high and 4-7 meters high, but continues on into some quite narrow, claustrophobic areas. The cave also holds some speleothems (stalactites and stalagmites). The inside of the cave was measured to be 31,490 ft in total length and 235 ft in depth as per a survey by the Georgia Speleological Survey. The wildlife in the area includes deer, turkey, quail, squirrel, and rabbits and the cave Itself holds tricolor bats and brown bats.
Sources:
“Crockford-Pigeon Mountain WMA.” Crockford-Pigeon Mountain WMA | Department Of Natural Resources Division, https://georgiawildlife.com/crockford-pigeon-mountain-wma.
“Caves of the United States of America: Pettyjohn Cave.” Show Caves of the World, https://www.showcaves.com/english/usa/caves/PettyJohn.html.
Georgia Speleological Survey Home Page, http://gss.io.caves.org/GSSWebsite/Home.html.
Caves – New Georgia Encyclopedia. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/geography-environment/caves.