Missouri Karst: Exploring Springs, Mills, & Caves in the Missouri Ozarks
- tagcaver
- 12 hours ago
- 3 min read
Each year for Easter, Jason and I trade our caving helmets for paddles and set off to discover a new slice of watery wilderness. This year the Current River, which is Missouri’s spring‑fed gem, called our names.
We headed out a day early to explore some of the Missouri Ozark region’s incredible springs and started out by free camping at McCormack Lake when we arrived. We awoke the next morning to the vibrant symphony of chirps, tweets, and songs that awakens the senses and fills the air with a sense of joy and natural beauty around the lake.
Our first stop was Greer Spring, Missouri’s second-largest spring. Here, we took a beautiful mile long hike each way to the spring. On a normal day, Greer puts out 240 million gallons of water however there were recent rains that allowed for much more than that to come out and there was also an impressive boil of water blowing out just down from the cave spring entrance.
From there, we stopped to check out Turner Mill, which began operating in the 1850s. It originally had a wooden wheel however it was replaced in the 1890s with a 25 foot metal wheel. The mill ceased operation in 1915 and the wheel is all that remains today and what a cool site this was to see!
We continued north, stopping at Falling Spring, and discovered the area was recently damaged by the tornados. Luckily the mill was not damaged but there were a significant amount of trees down. This spring only produces 500,000 gallons of water per day. As we were driving out from Falling Spring, we came across another small spring shooting out from the hillside. We took the opportunity to stop here and fill up our Epic Everywhere Nalgene Water Filter.
Next was Powder Mill Cave, which we knew was gated but still wanted to take a short hike to the entrance. We were late informed that there is nearly 8 miles of cave here, however it is a major bat hibernaculum.
After that, we hit up Alley Spring, which is a part of the National Park System (NPS). It produces 81 million gallons of water per day and the mill was built in 1893.
Next stop was Echo Bluff State Park, and finally Devil’s Well before meeting up with the rest of our group for a night of camping ahead of the paddle. Devils Well is a large sinkhole with a window opening in the top. The NPS built a spiral staircase going down into the sinkhole to a viewing platform where you can look 100 feet down at the lake below. The lake was first explored in the 1950s and the water is about 80 feet deep.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to our last stop, Montauk State Park, which is the headwaters of the Current River but it was still an amazing day spent exploring the springs and fascinating geology of Missouri.
**USE THE CODE CAVING FOR A 15% DISCOUNT ON ANY ITEM ON THE EPIC WATER FILTER WEBSITE**
TO PURCHASE LANDJOFF CAVE GEAR, VISIT MY SITE AT WWW.LANDJOFFUSA.COM
**USE THE CODE CAVING FOR A 15% DISCOUNT ON ANY ITEM ON THE ARMYTEK WEBSITE**
My Amazon Affiliate Link with Products we use (lights, boots, gloves, etc...)
Connect with us on our other platforms:
Blog ⮕ www.tagcaver.com
Email address: rowland7840@bellsouth.net
If interested in Trustfire lights, click this link to save $$
Commentaires