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Abstract Local folk-etymologists and professional placename scholars have agreed with 19th and early 20th-century travelers on the Missouri and Osage rivers that three separate sets of “Tavern“ creeks and caves must have been the sites of actual frontier taverns. Instead, both historical evidence and inspection of the sites indicate that the source of the names was the application, to certain open rock-shelters, of a play on the French words Caverne and taverne.