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Alabama's natural beauty shares the stage with Indian lore at this 250-acre park to the north of Gadsden. Once called Black Creek Falls, the 90-foot waterfall here now bears the name of the Cherokee princess Noccalula, who is said to have hurled herself to a watery death rather than marry a man she did not love. A bronze statue of the lovelorn maiden, poised to leap into the thundering cascade, looks out endlessly on the falls. Nearby, a stairway descends into Black Creek Gorge, a snaking chasm carved into the rocks just downstream from the falls. A 1 1/2-mile trail shadows the waterway as it races between towering sandstone bluffs. Another pathway, the Lookout Mountain Hiking Trail, which one day will lead all the way to Chattanooga, also can be sampled at Noccalula Falls Park.
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