BLUE HOLE AT NORTH CHICKAMAUGA

Closed right now, and worth saying first. Tennessee State Parks shut the Montlake Road entrance and main trailhead on 23 March 2026 for about a year of work: paving the lot, rebuilding the entrance, adding an accessible river viewing pier and a restroom. The Blue Hole Trail and the Blue Hole access are closed with it, along with Hogskin Loop, Stripmine Falls and the Cumberland Trail out to Boston Branch Overlook. Barker Pounds, which was the workaround, closed on 3 August 2026 for its own rebuild. Park officials have said people who try to reach the Blue Hole anyway may face charges.

When it opens, it is the best swimming hole in the county and the one everyone means when they say the Blue Hole. It sits in the gorge on North Chickamauga Creek, about nine miles of Cumberland Trail run through the park, and the water is cold enough in July to make the walk back feel good.

Swimming here is properly sanctioned rather than tolerated, which is unusual. The park runs a four-level system posted at the trailhead: green and yellow mean swimming is allowed, purple means no swimming, and red means the gorge is closed and there is no water access at all. Staff can move it with little or no notice.

The reason for that system is worth reading before you plan a trip. A teenage boy drowned here in July 2024 and a seven-year-old in 2021, and there have been five search-and-rescue callouts and two medical responses since the start of 2021. In June 2025 a flash flood stranded 56 people and two dogs in the gorge. The park's own wording is that flash flooding at the Blue Hole can happen any time rain is present in the watershed, which includes rain you cannot see falling upstream.

Cell service is unreliable past the trailhead, which is the only place in this guide where the land manager states that outright. Copperheads and rattlesnakes are both present. It became a State Park in 2024, so older write-ups calling it a State Natural Area are out of date.