Jesse James's Hideout at Meramec Caverns

Accounts differ on when Europeans first reached what is now Meramec Caverns: Clio gives both 1720 and 1722 for French explorer Philipp Renault’s “discovery,” and Wikipedia says a French miner first visited in 1722. French explorers mined the cave for saltpeter, an ingredient for gunpowder, during the 18th century. During the Civil War, the Union Army ran a saltpeter plant there until Confederate guerrillas destroyed it (in 1864, per Gadling). Wikipedia says the destruction was “likely including Jesse James,” though Clio notes that few sources confirm James took part. Local dances were held in the cave by the 1890s.

In 1933, Lester Dill (born St. Louis, 1898) bought Saltpeter Cave from Charles Ruepple and renamed it Meramec Caverns. He marketed it to travelers on Route 66, naming a section the “Jesse James Hideout” and citing local legend that Jesse James hid loot from the 1874 Gads Hill train robbery there. After a 1941 drought lowered the water level, Dill announced finds he tied to James, including a strongbox linked to the Gads Hill robbery.

The evidence for James’s use of the cave is debated. Clio says “debate exists about the veracity of this claim,” Wikipedia calls the historical evidence “scant,” and Gadling says James scholars dispute it. SHSMO says Dill contracted with farmers along major highways to have Meramec Caverns ads painted on their barns, while SleuthSayers says the barn-roof signs along Route 66 were painted for free. Clio counts barn roofs with the ads in fourteen states. His billboards read “Jesse James Hideout,” and his staff placed signs on visitors’ cars while they toured the cave.

It is the most-visited cave in Missouri, with around 150,000 visitors per year according to Wikipedia. Wikipedia notes more than fifty billboards along Interstate 44, and in 1960 even billboard space inside the cave.

In 1948, J. Frank Dalton signed an affidavit on 24 April in Lawton, Oklahoma claiming to be Jesse James. Rudy (Rudi) Turilli, the cavern’s manager, brought him to Meramec Caverns. Robert C. Ruark interviewed him there in June 1949. The date of Dalton’s arrival is inconsistent across sources: 1948 per RoadsideAmerica (befriended by Turilli), 1949 per Wikipedia, and 1950 per SHSMO and Gadling.

Dalton lived in the “Jesse James Cabin” at the cave. A birthday party was held for him; sources differ on whether it marked his 102nd or 103rd. The Jesse James Wax Museum opened in Stanton in 1964; it is now closed.

Turilli offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could prove Dalton was not James. Sources give different dates for the reward: 1966 per Wikipedia, late 1960s per SleuthSayers, and 1950 per Gadling. The James family took it to court and won; Turilli never paid and died in 1972.

Dalton died on 15 August 1951 in Granbury, Texas; his tombstone reads “Jesse Woodson James.” Jesse James himself had been shot by Robert Ford on 3 April 1882 in St. Joseph, Missouri. A 1995 exhumation at Kearney matched mitochondrial DNA of James’s relatives; Wikipedia says there is no scientific basis for doubting the remains, and RoadsideAmerica reports 99.7 percent concordance.

A 2000 attempt to exhume Dalton’s grave opened the wrong vault, which held the remains of William Henry Holland, so Dalton’s DNA was never tested. The 1995 Kearney results and the courts still reject his claim. In 1953 Dill and Lyman Riley bought Onondaga Cave in nearby Crawford County, according to SHSMO. SleuthSayers says Dill then ran a billboard “feud” with Onondaga over which was the better cave, without revealing that he owned both, and calls the feud “an orchestrated publicity stunt.”