The gorge ends in a natural stone amphitheater, where a seasonal waterfall slips some twenty feet over the rim — a torrent after spring rain, a thin whisper in a dry late summer. Fern- and moss-covered walls enclose the bowl on three sides, and the acoustics turn even quiet conversation into something resonant. The last few yards beyond the boardwalk are natural surface. This is also home to one of the region's oldest pioneer legends: a tale of outlaws, a hidden ledge high on the west wall, and an arrow once carved into the cliff to mark a treasure that — so the legend insists — was never recovered. Visitors have scanned these walls for it for generations.
Listen to what this room does to sound — even quiet voices come back off the stone. This is what the hollow was saving: a bowl of bare rock, closed on three sides, with the sky for a ceiling. The trail's end and the gorge's last room, all at once.
A gentle note for anyone on wheels: the boardwalk gives way to natural surface for these final few yards, so go only as far as feels steady — the room shows off just fine from the boardwalk's end.
That ribbon sliding off the lip is the Lower Falls, twenty-odd feet of drop when it's running. And I'll be honest with you about the water: after a good rain it pours; in a dry August it's a whisper. Either way, the room is the show. Those walls are dressed floor to rim in ferns and moss, fed by spray and shade, green even in the gray months. This little amphitheater took longer to carve than there have been people anywhere on Earth to see it.
Before you turn back, come in a little closer, because I want to aim your eyes somewhere particular. The west wall — on your left as you face the falls. Look it up and down, slow. There's an old story in this hollow, older than the state of Ohio, and that wall is the heart of it — but it isn't mine to tell.
Stay put half a minute. Boone's been saving this one all day.