Missouri Speleological Survey
Files Report for September and October 2003
Dan Lamping turned a nice map of Ahrens Hollow Cave in Jefferson County. This is a nice effort; Dan’s first cave map and surely not the last. Dan, Kim Chiles, Joe Sikorski, Ashley Fleming, and Matt Platter did the surveying. Dan also sent a very nice report on the cave, one of the better ones I’ve seen.
Mick Sutton sent a pile of new reports from Barry County. These are all on Forest Service lands and result from CRF’s work down there.
A visit with the Forest Service revealed that lands previously owned by the Forest but lying within the boundaries of Ft. Wood are no longer part of the Forest. Approximately 10,000 acres were transferred from the Forest to the Department of Defense. This included a pile of caves in Roubidoux Creek drainage including Killman Cave and, perhaps, Kerr Cave as well as Boundary Pit. The Forest acquired 2000 acres in return, but apparently no known caves.
Mike Flannigan sent a file of files questions and other information that needs some following up on. Good work, Mike…
Jeff Crews clarified a confusing situation at Yancy Mills in Phelps County. Three caves have been variously mis-named and will get straightened out and Jeff and friends survey them.
Non-caver Darrell Stoll of Springfield sent locations of several caves that he wants someone to check out. James Corsentino has made a preliminary trip and reports these are real, caves, new ones that need mapping and write-ups. James also found another new cave, also in eastern Christian County and sent a location in for that.
Ben Miller sent a new location in southern Stone County, an area that has not received much work in the past. Stone County now has 198 caves. WAIT, hold on. Here comes two more locations from Ben and now Stone County has an even 200 caves!
George Bilbrey sent news about a cave in Miller County that had been opened (I guess) by highway work. Gary and Alberta Zumwalt followed up on this but we’re still waiting for more information – apparently there are Native American issues involved.
Paul Woods sent reports and locations on five caves in McDonald County, at least two of which are new. His new locations are much better than the old ones, he cleared up a couple of “cave mysteries” and included some digital photos as well. We’ll provide him with some more data and let him go at it. Paul’s two new caves pushed McDonald County to an even 100 caves. Talk about an area that needs more work…
I got in on the fun too, with three new caves located along the North Fork River in Ozark County as a result of a CRF inventory trip. There seemed to be caves everywhere and that with the leaves still in full bloom. We plan a follow-up in the winter.
Michael Carter sent a very long list of entrances in Perry County that aren’t in the files. We’ll now have to go through each one and see which ones deserve new numbers. Michael found most of these by simply going through the digital maps, noting extra entrances along the way. Michael also is finishing up the leads list in a new format. Wait for more news on this.
And Earl Hancock sends news that he’s got a whole load of improved locations and photographs for the files from Jefferson County.
I highly recommend folks buy the National Geographic Topo program. For $100 you get coverage of the whole state and can plot locations either by hand or by data input, label your own maps and save them, and export (or print out) maps as jpgs. One easy way to improve on our data is entering in what we know of a location and comparing it to what you maybe have on an old tattered quad. When they don’t match, you can improve in a variety of ways. The program easily allows you to switch from Lat/Long to UTM’s in either 27 or 83 format.
Quad of the month: Brownfield. Look at it sometime and note how many miles of river bluffs there are, lots of dolomite everywhere, and only five caves in our files.
Scott House
1606 Luce St.
Cape Girardeau MO 63701
573-651-3782