According to Silver Dollar City park legend, a local group of vigilantes who later turned into outlaws called the Bald Knobbers were known for throwing people through the sinkhole into Devil's Den around the mid 19th century.

Despite there being no written evidence to substantiate it, it's possible that Stone County's unofficial Bald Knobbers used the cave for various uses sometime in 1889, between the time the mining operations ceased and late October of that year when it was purchased for sightseeing tours.

They carried lanterns for light and spent hours studying the cave walls carefully searching for signs of mineral deposits.

The miners returned to the surface late that evening having failed to discover the lead ore they sought, but were convinced that the flat ceiling of the Shoe Room contained marble.

No more expeditions took place until 1882 when another group of entrepreneurs, led by Mr. T. Hodges Jones and Truman S. Powell of Barton County, entered the cave in hopes of finding lead.

Originally called Marble City, it was located on the rough hilltop near the cave and recorded a plat map at the courthouse in Galena, Missouri.

Marmaros contained a hotel, general store, pottery shop, white oak furniture factory, and was rumored to have a saloon.

When the Lynches bought the cave, the town was burned to the ground by the local group of vigilantes known as the Bald Knobbers.

[3] The cave has remained open since, making it one of the oldest continuously running tourist attractions in the Ozarks.

A Chicago vacuum cleaner salesman, Hugo Herschend, purchased a 99-year lease on the cave in 1950, from The Lynch sisters.

Also, they added a narrow gauge funicular (cable-pulled) railway in 1957, whose trains pulled visitors a distance of 218 feet (66 m),[3] from the depths of the cave up to the surface.

Once the cable train was in operation, the Herschends decided to recreate the mining village Marmaros, for tourists waiting to go on a tour.

In 1972 Genevieve Lynch died and bequeathed the cave to the College of the Ozarks and the First Presbyterian Church of Branson.

Marvel Cave has been recognized for its outstanding work in preserving its colony of endangered Gray Bats.