Stark Caverns: Escape the Cave

September 25, 2026

A cave in Eldon offers a one-of-a-kind attraction.

Stark Caverns in Eldon is home to the United States’ only escape room located entirely in a cave.

The year-round escape room, named Bootlegger’s Bequest, is located in two connected chambers of the cave named Onyx Falls and the Ballroom. The goal of the hourlong activity is to find Great-Grandpappy’s moonshine recipe, which made him a fortune before he disappeared. While navigating the cave’s natural flowstone, stalactites, stalagmites, and helictite formations, players find a letter from the far-off tropics, which details how to locate Great-Grandpappy’s recipe and notates a location where it is legal to make moonshine.

A dimly lit cave room with stone walls, a green cart, wooden benches, a lantern, a barrel, and a reel in the corner. Shadows and warm light highlight the rough texture of the cave interior. — *• Props for the escape room include trunks, barrels, and wagon wheels.*
*• Stark Caverns*

“It’s a unique opportunity for people to experience the cave in a whole new light,” says Matt Naughten, general manager at Stark Caverns.

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A cave interior with camping equipment, including pots hanging over a fire pit, a metal barrel, containers, and various supplies scattered on the rocky ground. Warm lighting highlights the rough cave walls and setup. — *• Distillery barrels and other moonshine-making equipment from the Prohibition era were found in the caverns. • Andrea Kaneko*

While most escape rooms take place in a closed room, the natural cave environment provides a unique setting. Other escape rooms have giant ticking clocks and flashing lights that create an intense sense of urgency, but this escape room has no doors, no four walls; it features the sounds of flowing cave water. Players start in one area of the cave and unlock puzzles to continue. A game master then walks players to the next area.

A dimly lit underground cave with wooden railings, paths, and greenish water. Lights along the walkways reflect on the cave walls and water, creating a calm atmosphere. — *• The boardwalk crosses a 12-foot pool of water near the exit, marked by daylight. • Stark Caverns*

The game master also helps players with solving puzzles if necessary. “One puzzle is a picture map. You get these characters who had to go deliver moonshine to different stops in the town. So you have to match the words from that story to a physical map, which will give you a code of three numbers that you use to unlock a puzzle,” says Sarra Faust, marketing manager and event planner for the cavern.

A group of people stand inside a dimly lit cave tunnel with rough stone walls. Wagon wheels are leaning against the wall and lying on the ground near the path. — *• A Boy Scout group works together to solve clues in the escape room. • Stark Caverns*

The 11 puzzles inside the cave are loosely based on the cave’s actual history of moonshine. During Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933, the cave became a moonshine distillery and speakeasy. Artifacts from the cave’s moonshine days are on display in the cavern.

A group of people, including adults and children, stand on a wooden walkway inside a dimly lit cave. Colored lights illuminate a section of the cave wall above them. — *• All tours at Stark Caverns begin near this board walk. Colored lights show the way forward.*
*• Andrea Kaneko*

Tour guide Dane Johnston, referring to an area of the cave called Moonshiner’s Dam, says, “You can’t really see the entrance too well, so if a Fed were to walk by the entrance to the cave, they wouldn’t think anything of it and wouldn’t hear you. You could then continue on with your moonshine operation. If not and they decide to come in here, you could have an escape plan because down in there you can swim for about 10 feet to the complete opposite side of the cave.”

Two children lean over a wooden railing to look at rocks in a cave. An adult stands nearby, partially out of frame, with a flashlight illuminating the ground. The cave is lit by both artificial and natural-looking lights. — *• The escape room is for people 10 years and older. All ages are welcome on the regular daily tours. • Andrea Kaneko*

The escape room is $280 for 4 to 10 participants. The escape room opens after regular tours, and those times vary by season.

In addition to the escape room, Stark Caverns has daily tours and black light tours, gemstone and fossil mining, geode cracking, scenic hiking trails, a gift shop, and camping inside and outside the cave for youth groups. Along with the cave’s formations, the daily tour highlights evidence of Native American use, while the black light tour focuses on the science behind the cave formations, using black lights to highlight glow-in-the-dark geological features.

• 125 Cave Drive, Eldon • StarkCaverns.com

A cave interior with rough stone walls, dimly lit by yellow and blue lights highlighting the rock formations deeper inside the cavern. — *• Bone Pass was named for animal bones found there that might have been left by Native Americans. • Andrea Kaneko*

More Escape Rooms

• Breakout CoMo • Columbia
You don’t remember checking into Room 13, and you can’t leave as the cozy hotel begins to crumble.
BreakoutCoMo.com

• The Basement: A Live Escape Room Experience • Kansas City
Try to escape a serial killer’s house and face live scare actors.
BasementEscapeRoom.com

• Xcape Branson • Branson
Get immersed in an alien sci-fithemed escape room—complete with E.T. lurking inside.
XcapeBranson.com

• St. Louis Escape • St. Louis
Face Count Dracula and his legion of vampires in this spooky escape room.
StLouisEscape.com

This article was orginally printed in the October 2026 issue of Missouri Life.