(birds calling) - In the Bank of the Ohio River, about 130 miles above its junction with the Mississippi is a large cave.

Before you come to this place, you are presented with a scene truly romantic.

You see large ponderous rocks piled one upon another of different colors, shape and sizes.

Some appear to have gone through the hands of the most skillful artist.

Some represent the ruins of ancient edifices.

Others thrown promiscuously in and out of the river, as if nature intended to show us with what ease she could handle these mountains of solid rock.

After a small relief from this sea, you come to a second, which is something familiar to the first.

And here, you discover the cave.

Those were the words of Zadok Kramer from his 1802 edition of "The Navigator."

It was a guy that river travelers used to navigate the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and it was one of the earliest descriptions of this place we know as Cave-In-Rock.

(upbeat music) Today, we're giving you an inside look at the dark legends and incredible history surrounding this iconic place as we travel the Illinois back roads.

(upbeat music) This back road along the Ohio River takes you to a place where river pirates and counterfeiters once roamed.

Welcome to Cave-In-Rock State Park located just off Highway 1 in Hardin County.

Today, this is a quiet, serene place, a favorite stop for a picnic, hike or a camping trip, but the main attraction is the cave and its history.

- Well, we know prehistoric Americans were here, and with mound builder sites up and down the river, we know that there were prehistoric peoples that were in the area.

And over the years, they found some artifacts in the area, the immediate area, one of the artifacts being a small idol that was found when a man was digging up his garden on a house site up on the bluffs above the cave.

Also, when people first started coming to the area, they found several of the Native American stone box graves in the immediate area here.

So we know that Native American prehistoric peoples were using the cave, you know, before the Europeans arrived.

- Local historian Todd Carr has been researching the cave and the surrounding area since the turn of the century.

Geologists believe pressurized groundwater or an underground river carved the cave over time.

But this three-foot wide path at its mouth was carved by hand, likely by Native Americans who called this cavern the habitation of the Great Spirit.

In the early 1800s, Englishman Fortescue Cuming saw the cave for the first time.

He described it as one of the finest grottos or caverns I have ever seen, resembling the choir of a large church.

We don't know if Cuming was familiar with the history of the cave or if he was familiar with the inhabitants here in the late 1700s.

But what we do know is the people who were in the cave were no choir boys, and this was not a place for hope or redemption.

A gang of pirates arrived at the cave in the late 1700s.

They would lure river travelers into the cave, steal their belongings, and often, take their lives.

- River piracy on Ohio River here at the cave was only from about 1797 to 1799.

It's the late 1700s that these river pirates are operating.

- There are other records that kind of support these legends that we hear at Cave-In-Rock, right?

- Well, Captain Young and his regulators actually were responsible for driving Samuel Mason too here, because prior to 1797, they were operating out of Red Banks, Kentucky, which is where Henderson, Kentucky is today.

And they had a whole colony of counterfeiters and horse thieves and criminals there.

And the people of Kentucky came together and again, formed a vigilante group and drove them from Red Banks.

Well, they essentially just drove them down river to here.

- [Narrator] Samuel Mason was a former revolutionary war veteran, a militia leader and a justice of the peace who turned to a life of crime.

Cave-In-Rock became his base of operations.

- Some people say he was a gentleman robber.

He never robbed anyone of everything they had.

He would always give a little back to them.

Now, other people say he was a murderer.

- Different views depending on who you read.

- Yes.

- [Narrator] Marty Kaylor is the Cave-In-Rock Village President and the concessionaire at Cave-In-Rock State Park.

He was also part of a History Channel documentary shot at the park in 1998 and released a year later.

- It was awesome.

I was mayor at Cave-in-Rock at the time, and Gary Foreman Productions outta Chicago contacted me and he said, "You know, would you help us?"

And I said, "Yeah, I'll help you in any way."

Well, the night before, he called and he said, "Shave your beard, you're gonna be Samuel Mason."

And I thought I would just be like an Indian in the background or you know, whatever.

But it was, it was awesome.

The portrayal of Samuel Mason that I portrayed was he was a gentleman robber.

- Others have a more sinister view of Mason, describing him and his gang members as cutthroats who captured and plundered riverboats, seldom leaving survivors.

But what made Cave-in-Rock and this part of the Ohio so lucrative for a river pirate operation?

- We're talking about a time before steamboats, and so these flat boats were one-way trips.

And so the settled areas north, you know, up river from here and northeast of here, people were coming down river and down in the Illinois territory.

We're talking before it was settled, before this Illinois was a state and really before it was even a territory is the time period we're talking about, late 1700s, early 1899s was the time period for this river piracy.

So there wasn't very many people living here.

And this cave provided a natural grotto here for you to live in and to operate out of, you know, gave you protection and even if you were attacked, it also gave you some protection, you know, to fight back against someone that was coming to attack you.

- How much of that is based on history and how much of that is just legend and been handed down?

Can we verify any of that?

- A lot of the river pirates and the outlaws that used the cave are in folklore, and we don't really have anything, historic facts to prove that they were here.

But Samuel Mason was a river pirate, and when you think about the river piracy, people floating on the river in flat boats, and people luring them to the shore and robbing and killing them, it's really Samuel Mason and his gang that was operating at the cave that you think about that.

And it's really a short period of time.

- [Narrator] In 1808, Thomas Ash published a book called "Travels in America."

It detailed his visit to Cave-in-Rock, among other places.

Modern historians say many of his accounts seem fictionalized or exaggerated, but one tale has been passed down through generations.

It involves a man named James Wilson.

- Now, some historians believe that James Wilson was an alias for Samuel Mason.

But according to folklore, he had a sign out in front of the cave that said Wilson's Liquor Vault and House of Entertainment.

And of course, the offering a liquid refreshment in the house of entertainment would've been prostitution going on here.

And like I said, some historians think that that's an alias for Samuel Mason.

Well, on the squatters map for Illinois, prior to became a state where Elizabethtown is today, there was actually a entry in the squatters map for a James Wilson that had land there in the early 1800s.

And there is a log cabin that used to sit in Elizabethtown, old log cabin that for years has been known as the river pirate's cabin.

And it's in the same area where James Wilson had his entry in the squatters map.

And so that log cabin today has been rebuilt and is at the Pioneer Village in Harrisburg.

You can go visit it today, and there's a sign out front that talks about the river pirate's cabin.

But that cabin, which historically has been a river pirate's cabin, that's folklore that's been told for decades and decades, there's actually some records that a James Wilson lived in that area, and there's folklore that James Wilson had his Liquor Vault and House of Entertainment here at the cave.

- [Narrator] Another legend of Cave-in-Rock involves the infamous Harpe brothers, widely considered to be the first serial killers in American history.

Historians like Otto Rothert tell us the Harpes killed at least 39 people, mostly in Tennessee and Kentucky.

One story involves the Harpes joining Masons gang at the cave and taking part in pirating a riverboat, killing all on board except the captain.

- The river pirates were out in front of the cave around a fire celebrating the capture of that boat and what they were able to do that day.

The Harpe brothers took that captain to the top of the bluff above the cave, and they tied him naked to the back of a horse.

Blindfolded a horse, and then caused that horse to go galloping off the end of the bluff.

And that horse and the naked captain on horseback landed at the foot of the cave in front of all of those river pirates where they were supposedly celebrating, you know, the hijacking of this boat.

And that story is that that episode was too much even for these river pirates.

And they ran off the Harpe brothers after that and said, "You're too much for us, you need to go on somewhere else."

- [Narrator] Carr casts doubt on whether the Harpes were ever at the cave.

He says, while it's possible, it's unlikely they traveled this far north.

- So if they were here during that period of time, they would've had to leave southern Kentucky, come up to Illinois, spend some time up here with the Mason gang, and then the next time they're discovered is down in northern Tennessee.

It's not very likely that they were here.

They probably didn't travel up here, do this and then travel to Tennessee.

- [Narrator] Legend tells us of other outlaw groups associated with the cave, like the James Ford Gang out of Northern Kentucky, and his associate, Isaiah Potts.

Some say Frank and Jesse James also hid out here, although that's speculative.

They are legends though that today help draw visitors to this park.

- And then there's a lot of history that goes with this site, you know, some good, some bad.

You know, and there's all manner of different opinions on what actually transpired.

- Eric McCluskey is the site superintendent at Cave-in-Rock State Park.

That history, how does that help with drawing visitors to the cave?

- Well, I mean, you know, there's a lot of people, and it amazes me, the actual visitors that we get that come here for specifically nothing other than to see the cave because of that history.

You know, for good or bad, there were a lot of notorious people that supposedly called this cave home.

- [Narrator] That outlaw history has drawn Hollywood filmmakers to the cave.

The 1962 classic, "How the West Was Won" features a segment on the river pirate lair, although most of the filming was done at nearby Battery Rock.

In that MGM epic, Walter Brennan plays a character based on Samuel Mason.

Six years earlier, Walt Disney produced a movie about the legendary river pirates, including the characters Samuel Mason and the Harpe brothers.

"Davy Crockett and the River Pirates" shows many scenes filmed at the cave, but the cave's interesting history doesn't end with the outlaw legends.

- Back in those times, I mean, shelter was at a premium anywhere you could find it, and this is the ultimate shelter here.

I mean, and you know, it was a shelter for, like you say, it's been a business, it's been a hideout, it's been a, you know, someplace to seek refuge.

It's been utilized for a lot of stuff.

I mean, it really has.

It's amazing if you get to reading about it, yeah, mm-hmm.

- [Narrator] In his book, "Cave-in-Rock Pirates & Outlaws," Todd Carr details other interesting stories regarding the cave.

- In the late 1800s, Hardin County was known for producing a lot of potatoes and big potato producing area.

And here on this side of the county, they would bring the potato crop to the cave and use this like a giant root cellar to store those potatoes in till they wanted to take 'em to market.

So being right here on the river, they could bring their boats right up to the front of the cave.

They would load potatoes right out of the cave into the boats to take 'em off to market, so this would be a gathering area where they would bring all the potatoes to store 'cause it's always cool inside the cave here.

- [Narrator] It also served as a billboard for passing steamboats, like when St.

Jacob Oil was painted above the cave advertising a popular lineament used in the late 1800s.

- When we're talking about the days of the steamboats going up and down the river, you know, as they came down river, this cave is an obvious landmark and it was the perfect place for someone to put an advertisement on, like we do billboards along the interstate today, this was a billboard on the side of the Ohio River advertising a liniment encouraging people to buy St.

Jacob's Oil.

- There was a man named Yeakey who purchased the land above the cave, and then he gave this cave new life in a musical way, didn't he?

- Yes, Yankee was a violin maker, and he actually had a patent for a violin that he had invented.

And he built a dance floor in the back, a wooden dance floor, and put a fence across the front of the cave.

And then on Saturday nights, he would invite people from Cave-in-Rock to come out to the cave and charge 'em a nickel at the gate to come in and have a dance on Saturday nights here at the cave.

And not only that, but his brother-in-law was one of the men that operated packet boats up and down the river at that time, the mail and a lot of the goods traveled from town to town by packet boat, and Richard McConnell was his name.

And two of his packet boats were actually built inside of the cave.

One of 'em was a wooden hull boat called "The Egyptian," and one was a steel hull boat called "The Catherine."

And what they did, they built the boats in the cave, and then in the spring when the river comes up, they floated them out with the river.

When the river came in in the cave, they were able to take it from this dry dock out into the river and float them, and so two of his packet boats were built here in the cave.

- [Narrator] In 1929, 200 years after French explorers first discovered the cavern in the rock, Cave-in-Rock became a state park.

It's one of the first six areas in Illinois to be designated as a state park.

It's one of the smallest state parks in Illinois covering just over 200 acres, but it still draws more than 500,000 visitors annually.

- It's just a steady stream seven days a week, which is great for this area, you know.

This is, you know, about as far south as you can go.

I mean, Kentucky's right there.

And we get a lot of draws from, you know, out of state.

You know, it utterly amazed me when I first took over here.

It doesn't anymore.

It's just the norm now.

- [Narrator] Many of those visitors document their trip with YouTube videos, reels and Instagram posts, along with social media photos.

- Some of the best pictures are the ones from inside the cave looking out, you know, with the riverboats going by the barges.

We get a lot of photographers down here that take a lot of pictures, get a lot of graduation, a lot of prom pictures.

You know, it's a, I wanna say an iconic place for photography, but for free.

- Yeah, that iconic shot of this with people silhouetted against that bright skies you see so often.

At one time, riverboats would dock at the cave, giving passengers a chance to explore the cavern and its history.

- It used to be a stop when they had, you know, a lot of river tours down here, this used to be a stop.

They would let 'em off, they'd walk up to the restaurant, make a tour, they'd eat, and then they'd come back, get on them ship and away they'd go.

They're so big that the smoke stacks of those ships were almost level with the top of the, you know, up above the cave.

- Wow.

- I mean, that's how big those boats are.

- [Narrator] While the cave is the main attraction, the park provides many more amenities, including a campground that offers 34 class A sites and 25 others for those who prefer tent camping.

- We run about 550,000 visitors annually through the park.

We offer small hiking trails, we have a campground.

We have a restaurant, and then we have lodging.

We have four duplex cabins that are well utilized.

Then we have the cave, which is the focal point of the site, obviously.

- [Narrator] Marty Kaylor operates the restaurant and the cabin rentals, a job he's enjoyed since 2002.

- It's a full service restaurant, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

We have the best fish in Southern Illinois.

So it offers anything, anything and everything.

We have entertainment on the patio on Saturday evenings.

So just a little bit of everything.

- You're known for your catfish.

- Mm-hmm.

- Is there a secret to your catfish?

- [Marty] My dad's recipe.

- [Narrator] So he handed that down to you and you've kept it going?

- [Marty] Yeah, yeah.

- So you've taken that family recipe and kept it all these years and- - Well, I took his recipe and I tweaked it a little bit just to make it my own, and it's great.

- That's the good recipes, right?

You find a recipe, you give it your own spin.

- Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

- Alright.

- Restaurant and our cabins up there, Marty does a phenomenal job, and it's unbelievable how many people he actually runs through that restaurant.

Really is.

We're lucky to have it in this part of the world.

We really are.

- It's all about the catfish.

- It is, it is.

I mean, it really is.

I mean, you know, people love it.

They come from a long way just to eat the catfish.

- [Narrator] If you're considering a trip to Cave-in-Rock State Park, McCluskey says, there are a few things to consider before hiking to the cave, starting from the ground up.

- I would tell everybody that's coming here, make sure you have good footwear.

And why I say that is, is because this cave is underground, it stays wet and it's very slick.

And those rocks, that river just polishes those rocks, so they're like glass.

So when you put that and water and mud on 'em, it's really slick.

If I could give anybody any tip, get some really good footwear and pay attention and watch your step.

- [Narrator] Many say a trip to Cave-in-Rock is not complete without a ride across the Ohio River on the ferry.

- And this, the Cave-in-Rock ferry is the only remaining ferry on the Ohio River.

- [Narrator] The Loni Jo takes nearly 500 vehicles a day across this river.

It connects Illinois Route 1 to Kentucky Route 91.

- It's a vital service for Illinois and Kentucky.

Some people live in Illinois and they work in Kentucky at the hospital.

Some people live in Kentucky and work in Illinois at the quarries.

So it's a vital link.

When the ferry has to close, like during the flood, people would have to drive an extra hour just to get, you know, to their destination.

So it's a, yeah, it's a vital link.

- [Narrator] The ferry is a free service and operates from six in the morning until 10 at night, seven days a week.

And while you're in town, you can't help but notice these multicolored bicycles.

They're not for personal use, but serve as an artistic statement to brighten the small village and draw attention to various causes.

- That idea was brought up from Florida by an older couple that lived in Cave-in-Rock.

And the different colors of the bicycles represent a different woman's health issue.

- [Narrator] Still, the big draw continues to be the cave and its legendary history, whether fact or fable.

- With the cave being part of the state park system, and being again, on public land here, a lot of tourists come to see the cave.

You know, perhaps they've heard about the cave, you know, from river piracy.

There's some signage around that lets you know about the river pirate history here at the cave, and so a lot of tourists come to the area, and this is one of the sites that most tourists wanna come and see, is the cave.

And it's beautiful right here on the banks of the Ohio River.

And it's just a short hike down to the cave from, you know, the parking lot in the cave or in the state park, - And a lot safer than it was in the days of Samuel Mason.

- Yeah, it's a lot safer now than it used to be.

- Southern Illinois historian John W. Allen described the area this way.

"Today only the natural beauty of the historic spot remains, clothed in mystery.

In the hollow silence of the cave, a visitor can let a vivid imagination run riot.

He can dream little that will be beyond what actually happened."

If you wanna learn more about Cave-in-Rock and its rich history, I have a couple of books to suggest to you.

You can pick them up at your local library.

The first is "Cave-in-Rock Pirates & Outlaws," written by Todd Carr.

The second is the classic "Outlaws of Cave-In-Rock," written by Otto Rothert.

Rothert ends his book with a poem called "The Outlaw," written by Charles Jones back in 1835.

It closes this way, "Yon arching cave is lonely now, The tenants of its holds have fled, Or on the hill-top's rocky brow Are sleeping with the dead.

No more those cavern's walls will ring With sounds of mirth and rioting, And peacefully along the tide, The laden barks will slowly glide; And travelers, with curious eyes, Will view its chambers in surprise, And scarce believe that where they stand, Was heard the clash of brand on brand, And yonder yawning cavern's gloom The Outlaw's dwelling and his tomb; But rather all they hear they'll deem A fable, or a fairy dream."

If you want more information on Cave-in-Rock State Park, simply scan this QR code.

It will take you to the park's website.

There, you'll find useful information on lodging, camping, directions, and other resources to help you discover sites along the Illinois back roads.

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