The caves beneath the Soulard and Benton Park neighborhoods served as natural refrigerators for local breweries, and Adam Lemp was aging his German style beer in this cave system even before the California gold rush of 1849. During the American Civil War, Lemp began moving his entire brewery to this site to use the caves, which connected the Lemp Mansion at 3322 DeMenil Place with the cellars beneath the brewery. In the late 19th century, the Lemp family built a small theater in one cavern room and a pool similar to a Roman bath in another. Prohibition closed the brewery and the caves. In 1945, entrepreneur Lee Hess bought the abandoned cave and developed it as a tourist attraction, digging a new entrance and building a museum at the corner of Cherokee and Broadway. In 1950, he opened Cherokee Caves and a museum that displayed natural and man-made wonders, including spaghetti-like stalactites, an underground creek, prehistoric animal skeletons found in the cave, and the interior of the thousand year-old Damascus Palace and Ancient Tile Court that had been exhibited at the 1904 World's Fair. Cherokee Cave and Museum became a favorite haunt of South St. Louis school children, and though Cherokee Cave survives only in memory, dedicated volunteers saved and restored the DeMenil Mansion as a museum.
