It goes back to what has defined this area for over a hundred years. That is the hard working, honest, yet simple folk who inhabit these hills and would give you the shirt off their back. These are the people that Harold Bell Wright described in his book, The Shepherd of the Hills, which started bringing people to visit the area in the early 1900's. It's also what captured the imaginations of Hugo and Mary Herschend who moved here from Chicago in the 1940's. They took over the operation of Marvel Cave Park, and later created Silver Dollar City with the interest of preserving the flavor of these people who basically lived off the land and made every thing they needed by hand. The way they chose to do that was by making the theme of the park that of a small mining town of the 1880's.
