This was from the Branson Daily News this morning.
When Fairy Cave opened to the public in 1921, Pansy Powell had not yet turned 13 years old. The crowd was larger than had been expected, and her father Waldo was busy with the guests. When one group wanted to tour the cave, he handed Pansy a lantern and told her to take them down the rope ladder. “I had no idea what I was supposed to do,” she recalled years later, “and I was scared to death.” Nevertheless, she took charge and gave her first cave tour, a task she would continue, off and on, for nearly 50 years.
Among the many commercial caves in Missouri, Fairy Cave, now Talking Rocks Cavern, is one of the smallest, but it is also one of the most interesting, with an unusually large number of rare formations in its limited space. The cave has always played second fiddle to its larger sister in Stone County, Marvel Cave, but the history of the two are intertwined with that of the Powell family.
Between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Depression, Missouri’s caves were of great interest to entrepreneurs and pleasure-seekers alike. In heavily populated areas, such as St. Louis, the cool interiors were used as dance halls, theaters and beer gardens. Caves were also used to age wine, grow mushrooms and celery, and as ice houses.
After 1870, with more money and leisure time available and with railroads making remote areas more accessible, America became fascinated with the exploration and exploitation of the wilderness, scientific investigation of the natural world, and the health benefits of outdoor recreation. Americans flocked to mineral springs and health spas. Theodore Roosevelt became an icon for the middle and upper classes, who were frustrated with the crowded, polluted, industrialized cities. Campouts, float trips, hunting and caving became popular activities.
While some were busy with leisure activities, others were exploring the outdoors for more practical reasons. In southwest Missouri, many of the visitors were seeking minerals. In 1869, St. Louis businessman Henry Blow brought a group of six miners to Marvel Cave to search for lead ore. Blow was convinced that Stone and Taney counties would be rich in the minerals, and he made numerous land purchases in the area in 1872 after a mineral survey. The area around Joplin was proving immensely profitable, and there is a tendency for lead veins to run northwest to southeast, known as the Ten O’Clock Run. The Joplin-Galena district ran through Aurora, Galena, and Protem to Lead Hill, Ark.
However, Marvel Cave, originally known as Marble Cave, was apparently a disappointment to Blow, as he made no further investigations there. In 1870, the A & P Railroad acquired the land around the cave, and they soon sold the property to George Gilbert of Springfield. The interest in lead mining in the region continued. In 1884 the land was purchased by the Marble Cave Mining Company, a group of investors hoping to find lead and silver. By September 1899, Aurora had 40 drills seeking lead, and land prices in Taney County jumped from $2.50 to $10 an acre.
The Marble Cave Mining Company had its roots in a Grand Army of the Republic campout held in the late 1870s. The GAR was a fraternal organization for Union veterans, and the group that visited Stone County included Truman Powell, a newspaper editor from Lamar, Missouri. Born October 25, 1842, in LaSalle County, Illinois, Powell was the son of an American Baptist Home Mission Society minister, Thomas Powell. Powell, born in Wales and raised in upstate New York, had been assigned to set up churches throughout Illinois.
Truman spent his childhood in central Illinois and in Davenport, Iowa. At 19 he apprenticed to the Ottawa Republican in Ottawa, Illinois, where his father was now pastor of the First Baptist Church. Three years later, in February 1864, Truman enlisted in the Union Army. He joined the 64th Illinois Infantry, and went home to marry Helen Hopkins in March, after his basic training was completed. He fought throughout the war, claiming with pride that he had fought in every battle that Sherman’s troops engaged in. He was to name his first son William Tecumseh. Discharged as a lieutenant, Powell returned to married life and the newspaper. However, he was unsatisfied with his prospects in Illinois, and in 1869 moved to Carthage, Missouri, accompanied by his pregnant wife, his in-laws, and several other local families. He found a job with the Carthage Advance and soon became one of the publishers. In 1874 he moved to Lamar, Missouri, where he became an editor of the Lamar Advocate, and a lifelong friend of the paper’s founder, Levi Morrill.
The GAR camping trip was a revelation to Powell. Already interested in the homestead possibilities in the Ozarks, Powell fell in love with Stone County and Marble Cave. He and fellow GAR member T. Hodge Jones returned in 1882 for a further exploration of the cave, and Powell returned again in 1883 with Charles Smallwood. That year Powell moved to Galena and started the Stone County Advocate.
Jones bought the Marble Cave property, and he, Powell, and Peter Wyatt, from the Rolla School of Mines, formed the mining company. The group planned to mine the guano and marble from the cave while seeking lead. Guano, a popular fertilizer, had a market value at the time of $700 a ton, and the cave was full of it. The marble, which actually proved to be limestone, was never mined. Wyatt, perhaps inspired by the Yocum silver dollar legend, was hoping to find traces of silver, as well. The company also expected a town to develop, and a plat for Marble City was filed in 1884.
Powell and his family moved to a cabin on the cave property in 1886, and he began urging his Lamar friends to relocate as well. The Irwin brothers, a family that had joined the Powells in the move from Illinois to Missouri, followed Truman’s urgings and homesteaded land to the west of Marble City. Powell also made a homestead claim nearby in the Fall Creek valley, named the property Echo Glade, and began construction on a proper Victorian farmhouse and outbuildings.
The Irwin brothers were soon to discover an interesting hole on their property. The hole was first discovered by hunters around 1883. Partially hidden by a limestone outcropping on a steep hillside, the hole was small and narrow, but obviously very deep, and the hunters did not attempt entrance. In 1896, Arthur Irwin, who married Powell’s only daughter, Nettle, began urging Powell to come and investigate, and in June Truman and his oldest son, Will, joined Arthur, Al, and Frank Irwin on the hillside. Lowered on a rope connected to a windlass, Will, and then Truman, saw as much as a candle would permit.
