8
OZARK SPRINGS
ALL of the well-known large Ozark springs and nearly all of the smaller springs are karst features: i.e., they are water-filled cave-fissure-crevice systems which have been exposed by erosion to rush forth into stream valleys. Big Spring, near Van Buren, is the largest single outlet spring in the United States with an average low of 276 million gallons per day, or the equivalent of about 500 good city or industrial water wells. Maramec Spring is in fifth place with 93 million gallons per day, equivalent to over 180 good city wells.
Smaller springs are so common that a high percentage of the early settlers had access to springs on or near their property. These springs not only furnished water, but also acted as refrigerators with a typical average temperature of about 58° F. Many of the grist mills were powered by spring flow as was the Maramec Iron Works. Even those Ozarks mills not directly powered by springs owed their existence to springs because Ozark streams are predominantly spring-fed.
Work by the Missouri Geological Survey, U.S. Geological Survey, And U.S. Forest Service has demonstrated the connection between sinkholes and springs. A localized cloudburst in a sinkhole area may cause a distant spring to become muddy, tracer dyes can show sinkhole-spring connections, pollutants dumped in sinkholes have appeared at springs, and spring flows may increase dramatically in response to heavy rains. These data have proved surface feeders to springs as far as 35 miles away. In the past, and to a much less extent at the present, spring water has been distilled (with the addition of mash) to minimize possible health hazards of polluted water. The author has seen none of these dual purpose purification and transmutation enterprises in action but can vouch that the products result in varying degrees of euphoria and no hint of typhoid fever.
Kephart, in his 1913 publication Our Southern Highlanders traces the still back to the ancestors of the Southern Appalachian and Ozark pioneers in Scotland and Ireland who rebelled against the English excise tax on distilled spirits. This rebellious attitude reemerged in the American Whiskey Insurrection of the 1790s when the same ethnic group, including Appalachian mountaineers, revolted against a similar federal tax. The objection was in part a resentment of big government, but also economic in nature. Transportation was difficult, and according to Kephart, “A horse could carry about sixteen gallons of liquor, which represented eight bushels of grain, in weight and bulk, and double that amount in value. This whiskey, even after it had been transported across the mountains, could undersell even so cheap a beverage as New England rum-so long as no tax was laid on it.”
The individualism of the Ozarker coupled with the known therapeutic virtues of distilled products has contributed to the preservation of this spirit of free enterprise despite the hazards and diminishing economic rewards.
The Missouri Geological Survey (Department of Natural Resources) has, in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey, published a report, Springs of Missouri, which demonstrates that Rolla's scientists and engineers have a talent for interesting as well as useful expository writing. This publication, which is a bargain and probably will soon be out of print, may be purchased from the Department of Natural Resources in Rolla.
“Many of the grist mills were powered by spring flow”
Dillard Mill west of Dillard, Missouri.