SOME EASILY ACCESSIBLE EXAMPLES OF MISSOURI KARST:

Some of the best places to look at Missouri Karst are on public land, or have been developed, or set aside with access to visitors. These include:

• Karst Landscape--Grand Gulf State Park, Hahatonka State Park.
  
• Springs--Big, Alley, Round--all National Park Service sites in the Ozark National Scenic Riverways. Also Greer Spring, (U.S. Forest Service, Winona Ranger District) Blue Spring (Shannon County--Missouri Dept. of Conservation) and Maramec Spring (St. James--The James Foundation).
  
• Caves-- Bridal Cave, Camdenton, Mo., Fantastic Caverns, Springfield, Mo., Onondaga Cave State Park, Leasburg, Mo., Mark Twain Cave, Hannibal, Mo., Meramec Caverns, Stanton, Mo., Round Spring Caverns, Round Spring, Mo. These commercial caves (some private, some public) present a good cross-section of caves typically found in the state. Consult the commercial caves list for details on them.
  
• Sinks--The main feature at Grand Gulf State Park is the sinkhole collapse. Slaughter Sink and Conical Sink in Phelps County are impressive--Conical is visible from a public road, and Slaughter is on Forest Service land. Driving the public roads of Perry County, Mo., or Sinks Rd. in north St. Louis County, Mo., will give the observer a great look at a sinkhole plain. Sinks and sinkholes abound in the Ozarks.
  
• Losing Streams--Many intermittent Ozark creeks go underground, and re-emerge further down their course. Sinkin Creek in Shannon County and Hurricane Creek in Oregon County are well known losing streams, but there is really nothing to "see" at these places. Watch for signs of sinking creeks and losing streams as you hike throughout the Ozarks.
  
• Natural Bridges and Tunnels--Rockbridge State Park. As the name implies, there is a really nice natural bridge here, as well as much karst, and one of the longest caves in the state, toured by prior arrangement only during the winter, due to gray bats. Hootentown Natural Arch in Stone County, a local picnic spot, is one of the largest in the state.
  
• Estavelles--Ball Mill Resurgence near Brewer in Perry County, is a sinkhole which resurges after heavy rains, with the added feature that it becomes a "ball mill"--it tumbles stones in it's basin quite violently and noisily under those conditions.
  
• Karst Windows--Devil's Well near Akers, in Shannon County on the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, and Schnurbusch Karst Window (SKW) in Apple Creek, Perry County, on the Catholic church grounds. Devil's Well lets the visitor look down another 80 feet from a viewing platform at the bottom of a sinkhole onto an underground lake. The SKW is a rock grotto where water emerges from one end of a cave, flows about a hundred feet, then goes back underground for several miles.
  

  For more ideas on where to go, visit the Missouri Home Page, the commercial caves list, write to the public agencies with lands in Missouri, or go to the library and look up these books:
  

  Geologic Wonders and Curiosities of Missouri, by Thomas R. Beveridge, 1978, second edition revised by Jerry D. Vineyard, 1990, Missouri Dept. of Natural Resources, DGLS, Rolla, MO 65401.

  Springs of Missouri, Gerald Feder and Jerry D. Vineyard, 1974, 1982, MDNR, DGLS, Rolla, MO 65401.

  Exploring Missouri's Legacy: State Parks and Historic Sites Edited by Susan Flader, 1992, University of Missouri Press, Columbia and London.