Meramec Caverns

The cave in the bluffs above the Meramec River near Stanton was mined for saltpeter, the key ingredient of gunpowder, long before anyone paid to see it. The owners date the first mining to French explorers in 1720 and say it ended in 1864, when Confederate troops destroyed a Union gunpowder works inside. In the 1890s Stanton families held summer dances in a big room 300 feet in that they called the Ballroom, and in 1898 Charles Ruepple bought what was then known as Saltpeter Cave.

Lester B. Dill, who had been showing visitors Fisher's Cave in what is now Meramec State Park, bought it from Ruepple in 1933, renamed it Meramec Caverns and began tours. That year he broke through a crevice into upper levels and found the formation he called the Stage Curtain, nearly 70 feet tall, around which he built the Theatre Room. In the drought of 1941 the pool at the end of the main level dropped about six inches, Dill went under the wall, and found more passages, along with the items that let the owners call the cave a Jesse James hideout, a claim still told on the tour.

Dill's real gift was advertising. He had the cave's name painted on barns in 14 states and sent bumper sign boys to tie Meramec Caverns signs to visitors' cars while they were underground, before adhesive stickers existed. His descendants still run the cave. The guided tour covers 1.25 miles on lit walkways in air that stays at 58 degrees.