In Missouri, show caves became an especially popular pastime. Some property owners charged a modest admission fee, drawing families from nearby cities. Caves were ideal settings for these extravagances of oratory, musical, and other performance entertainments.įrom 1885 to 1925, the Ozarks witnessed a craze for summer cave parties. In the 1870s and ’80s, the Chautauqua movement brought adult education programming in the evenings. During this period, several of the show cave operations became associated with resorts that offered additional attractions such as rental cabins, swimming, fishing, and hunting. It wasn’t until after that terrible war that Americans began to see them as places for leisure and fun.Īs the twentieth century dawned, the middle class expanded, and the people of the United States, including young, Midwestern cavers, demanded athletic and leisure pursuits. Photo courtesy of Onondaga Cave State ParkĪs the culture of the Ozarks changed during the Civil War, both Union and Confederate troops occupied and mined the caves for saltpeter, a key component of gunpowder. As the settlers began discovering these cave systems, they began to tame and adapt them to for use as storage rooms and as informal gathering spaces.
Homesteaders trekking west settled the area around the Missouri River, bringing their own folk cultures with them. They frequently used the caves as temperature-controlled shelter in the winter, on hunting trips, or as they migrated through the region.
Native American tribes like the Niúachi (Missouri) and Osage flourished in the region. The work of making the caves habitable and hospitable stretched far further back than families like the Herschends. “If the operator has less than 40,000 annual attendance, the profit margin is so tight that the operator needs to know a lot about electric and plumbing, marketing, hiring, training, leading people, environmental protection, graphic design, HR, hydrology, biology, OSHA regulation, insurance, and much more. “A show cave is a small business at its core that has a natural resource as its focus,” Bruce told me. He hails from a long line of cave keepers, a perfect person to speak about the challenges and rewards of running a cave. Over the last century, families and entrepreneurs developed these spaces for locals and tourists, so that, to this day, they echo with the sound of local voices, live music, and applause.īut how does one become a cave keeper? Vivian Ireland tells us the secret to forging a good working relationship with all things cavernous: “Patience! Mother Nature has her own idea on how a cave should function, and that does not always coincide with our manmade best-laid plans.”īruce Herschend is son of Jack Herschend, the co-owner and former CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment Corp., which owns Silver Dollar City. Lying deep in the Ozark Mountains, the Ozark show caves are part of a vast underground network that has quietly shaped culture for hundreds of years. A huge concentration-around 7,000-sit in the Missouri-Arkansas area, and a small set of these have been developed by the people of the Ozarks into performance venues, cared for by families of music lovers.
There are more than a few kinds of caves in the Ozark region, but what’s important to know is that for 700 million years, they formed slowly, winding their way through deposits of limestone. Some of these tunnels are still filled with water.
They began with water, working underground to wear away passages and long chains of underground tunnels. But when the clock strikes 9:30, it’s showtime.Ĭaves like Marvel are some of the oldest performance venues in America, spaces where for hundreds if not thousands of years people have gathered to tell stories, worship, and experience music and adventure. After extended periods of rain, she looks for safety concerns that may have resulted from flooding, debris that washed onto the walkways, and any animals that may have sought shelter that are not natural inhabitants.ĭark and empty, the cave might seem like just another feature of nature. She clears mud, wipes handrails, monitors and assesses any changes in the cave environment. She checks lighting systems, water pumps, and equipment like belowground telephones. Each morning, Vivian Ireland, manager of Marvel Cave at Silver Dollar City, conducts an inspection at least one hour prior to opening.
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