9
THE DEVIL IN THE OZARKS
REFERENCE to Missouri's springs brings to mind a bit of earlier exposition exemplifying an over-achiever in full flower. Around the turn of the century, a geologist was so charmed by Round Spring that he described it as follows:
Two miles further up the road towards Salem and facing towards the rising Sun is a round abyss in the Earth, about one hundred feet wide and nearly as deep. It stands always about half full of beautiful blue water on whose smooth surface never a tipple is seen. I should have said divine blue, for I cannot disassociate such exquisite blue and white from divinity. That, of course, is the Round Spring. But its name does not begin to convey the slightest conception of its beauty. Lifting your visual orbs from its snow white bottom, fifty feet below, and fixing them on the deep serene, forever mirrored in its placid surface, you have a cyclorama whose ever varying charms will never be eclipsed by anything more beautiful, until you have beheld the objective beatitude of Heaven.
Round Spring has survived this accolade and provides a pleasant interlude to the rigors of Highway 19 north of Eminence.
Ozark rivers are spring nurtured and deserve a bit of recognition in any discussion of karst features. Major streams, such as the Gasconade and Meramec, are exceptionally crooked, yet have eroded far below the surrounding uplands. This combination of crookedness and "canyonosity" (freshly coined word) is an unusual geologic condition characteristic of, but not confined to, the Ozarks.
As the float-fisherman can attest, a five-mile-float may result in a beeline progress of less than a mile, or in some cases only the thickness of a narrow rock neck at the closure of the loop. Such a ridge may be called the Narrows as on the Piney west of Houston, or the Devil's Backbone. The Ozarks are well endowed with Narrows and Devil's Backbones.
In addition to supplying about 20 backbones to Missouri, the Devil has an assortment of other natural feature namesakes, including dens, tables, racetracks, hollows, and a toll gate. Of theological interest is the fact that at least 90 natural features have been credited to the Devil and several others refer to Hell.
Settlers from the Appalachian highlands were largely Scotch-Irish in their background and their concern with the Devil was undoubtedly in many cases a result of Calvinistic influences rather than familiarity with the legend of Faust. No cases of natural surface features involving angels were found. This condition is in sharp contrast to western United States where the Latin-American influence predominated and features incorporating terms alluding to angels and Heaven are common.
At many locales, Ozark streams have shortened themselves by cutting through the rock necks or "narrows," thus leaving the loop as an abandoned valley. The most impressive example of such shortening in the geologic past is the eight-mile-long abandoned loop of the Gasconade between Rich Fountain and Highway 89 northwest of Belle. Farmers on this ancient loop can thank the Lord for hundreds of acres of good bottomland, even though they are far removed from the river banks. Hills in the center of such abandoned loops often bear the proper noun name Lost Hill, a name brought into the Ozarks by settlers from the southern Appalachians where the term is common. Dry Fork, south of the Pine Hill cemetery and east of the Norman Creek junction, has a complex system of such cut-offs and lost hills.
The most heavily traveled abandoned stream valley in the Ozarks is that stretch occupied by 1-44 between Six Flags and Eureka. In this case, the valley was not abandoned as a result of a neck cut off; it was a case of a stream being short-circuited by another stream into the Meramec River.
Don't take the clear Ozark streams for granted. They are unusual in contrast to the streams of the Corn Belt muddied by that filthy black thick topsoil!
“Farmers can thank the Lord for hundreds of acres of good bottomland,”
Abandoned loop of the Gasconade near Rich Fountain, Missouri.
“Don’t take the clear Ozark streams for granted.”
Near Dillard Mill.