I find this discussion quite interesting because I am currently writing a history of the Marvel Cave area of Stone County, Missouri. It is sort of a history of the area before it was Silver Dollar City. One goal I have for this book is to track down the origins of the folk tales and determine if they are based on any actual history. I am finding that many of the stories do have a basis in fact but have been twisted with the retelling. It seems that everyone who writes the history only researches what others have recently written. Like whispering a story in the ear of one person who in turn whispers into the ear of another, the story is continually changing.
Part of the problem with these stories is that it is often HARD to determine what the REAL STORY is. It is difficult to separate the myth from history. The reason for this is often the lack of documentation. Not many towns in SW Missouri had a newspaper in the 1880s. One that did was Galena. However, no issues of the newspaper from that era have survived to this day. With great persistence I have been able to find a few gems of history in some very rare books and an occasional newspaper article in an out of town newspaper.
The story of the man thrown into the cave by the Bald Knobbers is based on fact, but the real story is a bit different. The incident had nothing to do with the Bald Knobbers and was before the Bald Knobber era. It happened in 1865 at the end of the Civil War. An accused bushwhacker is said to have been thrown into the Devil’s Den (now Marvel Cave) by a “home guard” unit of the Union Army.
One story that I have NOT found a source for yet is the one about the Bald Knobbers burning the town of Marmaros. I suspect that a common forest fire may be the culprit but the research goes on. There was a large forest fire in the area about the same time that the cave was sold to Mr. Lynch. If anyone knows of any historical source for the burning of the town, please post it here.