Phillip Dieter, who lived from 1740 to 1813, anglicized his family name to Teter after he settled in the Germany Valley. The Teter family was part of the wave of German Lutheran farmers who moved up the South Branch Potomac valley from Pennsylvania in the mid-eighteenth century, drawn by inexpensive limestone-rich farmland. The cave on Teter's property was probably known to local indigenous people long before he arrived. Local oral tradition holds that the Seneca Nation used the cave, although the Seneca's home territory was much further north in New York - the name 'Seneca Caverns' came from the same vague nineteenth-century use of 'Seneca' to refer to Iroquoian peoples generally. The Teters kept the cave more as a curiosity than a commercial venture for nearly a century and a half.

Francis Asbury was one of the two original Methodist missionaries in the United States. His Journal records a June 1781 ride across North Fork Mountain into Germany Valley to preach to the German farmers. He preached to about ninety 'Dutch folk' who, in his words, 'appeared to feel the word.' On June 21, the Teters showed him their cave. Asbury's Journal entry from that visit gives the first recorded description of what was then called Asbury Cave (now Stratosphere Balloon Cave, in fact - the naming has shifted around in the historical record). Asbury also described the large spring known as Judy Spring. The Methodist bishop's interest in caves was uncommon for a clergyman of his era. His Journal entries from this trip become one of the earliest descriptions of the Germany Valley landscape in any literature.

Seneca Caverns runs along a roughly three-quarter-mile prepared trail, descending up to 165 feet below the surface. The largest room inside is Teter Hall - 60 feet tall and 60 feet wide in places - named in honor of the original family who owned the cave. Various decorative formations along the route have been given evocative names by generations of guides: Mirror Lake, Niagara Falls Frozen Over, Fairyland, the Capitol Dome, the Castle on the Rhine. The cave was electrified in 1930 when commercial operations began. Lighting installations were updated over the decades, and the basic tour route has remained largely the same. The speleothems - dripstones, flowstones, and stalactite-stalagmite complexes - reflect tens of thousands of years of slow calcium carbonate deposition from water seeping through the limestone above.

The Harman family bought the property from the Teters in 1928 and began the commercialization that opened the cave to the public two years later. The cave operated through the Depression as one of the small roadside attractions that gave struggling West Virginia tourism economy something to draw visitors. The Harmans ran the operation for over five decades. In 1984, the property was acquired by Greer Limestone - the same company that operates the controversial Hellhole quarry in Germany Valley. The cave remained open to visitors and continues to operate as a show cave today, a small commercial venture in a county dominated by federal land and outdoor recreation. Tours run multiple times a day during the warmer months. Even on a hot July afternoon, the cave stays a cool 50-something degrees, which has been part of its appeal since the first paying visitor walked through in 1930.