Missouri Speleological Survey

Files Report for September and October 2004

As usual I am behind with lots of new material coming in. Had a good time the morning of the MSS meeting adding new caves, correcting others. And we had a very good time that night at the local campsite. Next day, something like eighteen people went out and surveyed in Forest Service caves west of Rolla. Good times, good times…

New maps came from Ben Miller:

Stone County:

Random Act of Karst Pit: by Ben and Amber Spohn.

Fox Cave by Ben and Amber.

Crossbones Pit by Ben and Paul Woods.

Boone County (Three Creeks Conservation area):

Bird Bone Cave by Ben and Brian Sakofski

Green Teeth Cave (maybe we don’t want to hear this story) by Ben and Bob Lerch.

Ben Miller new locations on two caves on the south side of Table Rock. Next he sent a location for a new cave, Stumpy Pit, and sent a location for a new Forest Service cave north of Table Rock. And then some more new cave locations…

Mick Sutton sent a revised Oregon County file, plus Topo! GPS files plus photographs and a big pile of cave maps (the dtails of which I have forgotten to write down). Mick also sent a report on Estes Cave, Washington County.

Dan Lamping sent a new location of a cave in Shannon County on the Exchange quad. Dan also sent some slightly revised locations of caves located by Tim Harrison and Tom Panion of MVG and sent two locations for new caves; one located by Tim and one by Ray Mallinckrodt. MVG continues to get a lot of work done on Pioneer Forest lands of Shannon County. And they are happy to have more help… Most people have heard that Pioneer Forest is now wholly owned by the L-A-D Foundation. People may not know that in addition to caves located on Pioneer lands, L-A-D also owns a variety of karst sites not on Pioneer lands per se: Ball Mill resurgence in Perry County, Clifty Creek Natural Bridge in Maries County, and Grand Gulf State Park in Oregon County are all owned by L-A-D.

Matt Platter of MVG sent two reports and maps on new caves: Watson Spring Cave in Shannon and Hunter Cave in Jefferson. Dan Lamping helped with the survey on Watson and Penny Feero helped with Hunter. Nice work.

Jon Beard provided better locations for 3 caves in eastern Christian County on Forest Service land. Jon also provided point locations for two known caves in Bates County and added locations and names for three others in Bates that had escaped being assigned numbers (despite being published in Missouri Speleology!)

Michael Carter sent a variety of bits of information. Michael also sent a new, nearly completed file on USFS caves in Christian and Douglas Counties.

Leonard Butts sent a new GPS location on a cave near Steelville. He also corrected the public land location which someone had originally submitted backwards.

At the MSS work session James Corsentino, Michael Carter, Andy Free, Kristen Alvey, Steve Taylor and I worked on FS cave locations around Ft. Wood. James followed up with an email full of name corrections, five new caves, etc. In a bit of email research, Andy, Leonard Butts, and James cleared up confusion about a cave on FS land near the fort. Kristen and Steve also have a pile more information on caves they have located and/or visited; they are working this material into file format. Very nice work they do, with GPS locations and photographs.

Michael Freeman sent the location and description of a new cave in northern Warren County. That’s an area few cavers ever visit.

Jo Schaper contributed info on a cave located under Union Station in St. Louis.

Dave Ashley sent a biology report on a Forest Service cave in Crawford County that he and his summer class students visited.

Spike Crews sent new lengths for Roubidoux Cave, Campbell Cave, and Tunnel_Spring system.

Ray Mallinckrodt sent a nice, lengthy report on a new cave in Howell County, continuing his fine work in that region of the Ozarks.

Alberta Zumwalt sent a new version of Miller County with reports typed into it. This has been folded in to the database.

Earl Hancock sent a nice, lengthy, a detailed report and map on “Anniversary” Cave in Shannon County. Due to old, poor, data that Earl had available he rightfully thought it was a new cave. Turned out it was Rimstone or Troublesome Knob Cave in hiding. But that doesn’t diminish the contribution one bit. The map is fine (with photos on it), the report is excellent, plus a topo map with dot on it, photos of the cave, etc. Gary Hart and Deb DuMont helped with the survey. Nice work Earl and Lannis!

And at the MSS meeting, Matt Forir turned in a big folder full of files material: locations, map, very lengthy description, and photographs of Finnigans Cave, Christian County; 11 legal locations on new and known caves in southwest and northwest Missouri; and descriptions of four more caves, also in southwest Missouri. Plus he included a map of one of the new caves from Greene County. Good stuff here!

A map of Brown Cave #2 in Pulaski County was completed and turned in. The survey was by James Corsentino, Todd Heintz, Andy Free, and Julie Dame. James drew the map in pencil and Matt Goska did the final digital drafting. Nice map.

And we lost a couple of “caves” in the auditing process: two caves allegedly inhabiting Barry County were found to be in the files twice, at slightly different locations. So the duplicates were exorcised.

People actually ask where you can look for new caves. Try most anywhere in the southern half of the state. Or go to NE Missouri and locate the numerous caves in Marion or Ralls or Pike that have never found their way into the files. Or go to Jasper County. Or most anywhere you look. I found a new cave in Texas County this month. Just an accident, actually – just cruising the digital topos and there it was MARKED ON THE TOPO! No kidding. And it wasn’t in the database. In fact there was only one other cave in the database on that whole topo. And this one was new. Amazing!

Apologies to those I have somehow overlooked. I know that I have; it’s just a matter of quantity, not senility.

And as I write this my inbox is filling up with new material from Dan Lamping and the good folks at MVG. Back to work…

Scott House

Missouri Cave Database

1606 Luce St.

Cape Girardeau MO 63701

573-651-3782

scott_house@semo.net