Iron County, Missouri
The motto of Iron
County, Missouri -- “Where every drive
is scenic, and every stop historic” – is a
fitting acknowledgment of this east-central Missouri
county’s distinctive mix of natural wonder and
American history. The majority of the county’s
11,000 citizens reside in the six biggest towns --
Annapolis, Arcadia, Des Arc, Ironton (the county
seat), Pilot Knob and Viburnum.
Area attractions include a bounty of state parks. Taum
Sauk Mountain, at 1,772 feet, is the
highest point in Missouri. From its peak flows Mina
Sauk Falls, the tallest wet-weather waterfall in the
state. The three-mile Mina Sauk Falls Trail takes
hikers through a portion of the famed Ozark Trail,
on down to Devil’s Tollgate, an eight-foot-wide
passage through volcanic ryhyolite standing 30 feet
high. Further down the trail is
Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park. Here’s
how the park got its unusual name: Over a billion
years ago, hot volcanic ash and gases spewed into
the air, then cooled forming igneous rock. Shallow
seas pooled in the craters, and the waters of the
Black River became confined, or “shut in” to a
narrow channel.
Other area attractions are the gigantic granite
boulders at Elephant
Rocks State Park, also formed by the
cooled magma of volcanic eruptions from centuries
past.
A great deal of Iron County – and 28 other
Missouri counties – consists of the Mark
Twain National Forest, established by
Presidential Proclamation on September 11, 1939. The
forest’s 1.5 million acres spans the southern half
of Missouri, and represents 11 percent of all
forested land in Missouri. The forest includes seven
federally designated wildernesses and numerous
historical and archaeological sites.
Other state parks and historical sites within a
10-mile radius of Arcadia Valley, the center of Iron
County: Fort
Davidson State Historical
Site, Millstream
Gardens Conservation Area, (home of the
yearly Missouri Whitewater Championships), Marble
Creek
Recreational Area and the Silvermines
Recreational Area.
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