Hocking Hills State Park Visitor Center

Hocking Hills State Park Visitor Center is a two-story orientation and exhibit building at the Old Man’s Cave parking area off OH-664. It introduces the wider region with interactive displays and wildlife showcases, with resident hawks and owls in an enclosure behind it. If Old Man’s Cave is on your plan, stop here for context before walking into the gorge; the center and the trail are separate visits from the same lot. The center also has restrooms and a gift shop.

The Raptor Enclosure sits behind the building and is home to resident hawks and owls. It gives visitors a close look at some of the wildlife cared for at the park, alongside the region-focused exhibits indoors.

The cliffs and recess caves around Hocking Hills are cut into Black Hand Sandstone, deposited more than 350 million years ago. Uplift and stream erosion shaped the gorges; the softer middle layer wears into recess caves while harder layers above and below resist erosion. That structure is part of what makes the area’s narrow, overhung ravines distinctive.

The region takes its name from the Hocking River. ODNR traces “Hocking” to the Delaware name “Hockhockin,” meaning “bottleneck,” a reference to water entering a narrow, gourd-shaped gorge.

People have lived in the Hocking Hills area for thousands of years: the earliest local evidence dates to about 7,000 years ago, and Adena people lived in the region roughly 500 BCE to 100 CE. Delaware, Shawnee and Wyandot communities lived and hunted here from about 1600 to 1800.

The present visitor center was built in 2019, replacing an earlier park center that had served since 1989. It is a practical orientation stop beside one of the park’s best-known trail destinations.