Historic Three Caves is currently closed. Notification will be posted on this website when it is reopened.
Three Caves is not a cave at all, but a former limestone mine. The mine began operating on a small basis in the spring of 1945. The site of Three Caves was owned by Madison County and leased to Madison Limestone Company for five cents per ton of limestone hauled away.
After the war ended, the demand for limestone for construction increased for a fast-growing Huntsville. At its height, the quarry spawned tons of limestone that paved the majority of Huntsville’s original main streets and parking lots. The Three Caves Quarry closed in 1952 due to skyrocketing operation costs and the growth of Huntsville. Open pit mining was more efficient, and a mining operation in the middle of town was unsafe for obvious reasons.
The former quarry was donated to The Land Trust of Huntsville & North Alabama in 1989. Madison County designated Three Caves as a fallout shelter during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Since the 1980’s, Three Caves has been used as a movie backdrop for films including “Ravagers,” starring Richard Harris and Ernest Borgnine (using about 350 Huntsville residents as extras) and “What Waits Below” with Timothy Bottoms, as well as a rock video by “Kansas.”** The locally produced “Like Moles, Like Rats” also prominently features Three Caves.
Kansas has released a 30th anniversary CD/DVD box set called “Sail On” that has most of the music videos that Kansas did from the seventies and eighties. There is a video shot in Three Caves from the Monolith album called “Reason to Be” available at Borders.
