If you only do one thing in Hocking Hills, do this. The Old Man’s Cave gorge packs the park’s whole personality into a single half-mile of trail: a chain of waterfalls, a 200-foot-long recess cave, stone staircases carved into the rock, hand-cut tunnels you walk through, and the famous Devil’s Bathtub — a swirling pothole in the streambed.
The gorge is the busy heart of the park and home to the main visitor area, so it’s also where you’ll find the largest parking lot, restrooms, and the trailheads that connect onward to Cedar Falls via the Grandma Gatewood Trail. The full Upper and Lower Falls loop is the classic route; budget extra time because you’ll stop constantly to take photos.
The gorge takes its name from Richard Rowe, a hermit who is said to have lived in the large recess cave here in the late 1700s and is buried beneath the ledge. The trail threads roughly a mile of streambed past five signature features: the Upper Falls, the swirling pothole called the Devil’s Bathtub, the Sphinx Head rock, the Old Man’s Cave recess itself, and the Lower Falls.
Much of what makes the walk feel like an adventure — the stone staircases, the hand-cut tunnels through solid rock, the A-frame bridge — was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. The gorge is cut into Blackhand sandstone, the soft, erosion-prone rock that gives all of Hocking Hills its caves and overhangs.
Pro tip: Arrive before 9 a.m. (or after 4 p.m.) on weekends and in fall. By late morning the lot fills and the staircases bottleneck. The light in the gorge is also softest early and late.
Photo: Rhododendrites · CC BY-SA 4.0
- • This is the main visitor area — the largest parking lot, restrooms, and the trailhead that also serves Whispering Cave.
- • Busiest spot in the park: arrive before 9 a.m. or after 4 p.m., especially on fall weekends.
- • The Grandma Gatewood Trail connects Old Man’s Cave to Cedar Falls (about 3 miles one-way) and on to Ash Cave.
- • Stone stairs get genuinely slick when wet or icy — sturdy footwear, and microspikes in winter.
- How long is the Old Man’s Cave trail?
- The core gorge loop (Upper Falls to Lower Falls and back along the rim) is roughly a mile and takes most people 1.5–2.5 hours with photo stops. You can extend it by continuing on the Grandma Gatewood Trail toward Cedar Falls.
- Why is it called Old Man’s Cave?
- It’s named for Richard Rowe, a recluse said to have lived in the recess cave in the late 1700s. The “cave” is a large sandstone recess shelter, not an underground cave.
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