Part 26

RIVER CAVE (40)

This is at the foot of a bluff facing the Gasconade, 21/2 miles below Gascondy. It has a solid rock bottom, rising steeply for a few feet within the entrance, and a constantly flowing stream covers half the space between the walls.

ROCK SHELTER

There is an excellent rock shelter, 50 feet long, over which the cliff projects for 15 feet, in front and to one side of the entrance of River Cave. On this is a slight depth of earth in which were found some broken bones and shells. The site is an excellent one for camping parties, but has no evidence of other than temporary use.

STEUFFER CAVE

Four miles east of Freeburg, in a ravine, is a cavern popularly known as Beer Cave, being formerly used as a storage room for beer made in a brewery built just in front of it. The entrance is 8 feet wide and 12 feet high. The front chamber, having practically the same dimensions, extends directly back for 50 feet, then makes a turn. The floor is a mixture of clay and angular gravel, with a continuous downward slope from front to rear. Water cracks show that it is sometimes flooded.

The place was never fit for living in.

CAIRNS

At the Gasconade River bridge, on the Rich Fountain road, two creeks on the west side, Brush and Swan, separated only by a narrow ridge which terminates abruptly at either end, come in a fourth of a mile apart. Both rise in the same lake, 6 miles from the river, and flow through parallel valleys, thus draining an abandoned ox-bow curve of the stream.

On the extreme eastern point of this ridge are two cairns. A fourth of a mile from these are two others; and farther back still more of them. All are now destroyed. They were the usual conical heaps of stone, 18 to 20 feet across.

HOUSE MOUNDS (41)

A group of house mounds extends for half a mile eastward from Rich Fountain, along the valley of Brush Creek. They are fully 100 in number, and it is said there were formerly many more which are now leveled by cultivation. The ground is low, in some places swampy, so that water or mud surrounds many of them after a heavy rain.

"INDIAN FORT" (42)

This structure, also called the "Indian Lookout," is located on a bluff facing the Osage, half a mile below the "Painted Rock," and near the buildings of the Painted Rock Country Club, of Jefferson City.

Except for a slight projection or offset at one side, which contains an opening or doorway, it was practically identical in appearance with the vault graves along the Missouri River bluffs, described in Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 37; or else with those on Big Piney River in Pulaski County. It is formed of sandstone slabs, once laid up in a wall but now scattered in confusion as if fallen or thrown down. Apparently it measured about 32 to 35 feet outside and 12 or 13 feet inside.

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COLE COUNTY

NATURAL BRIDGE CAVE

This is at the top of a bluff facing the Osage, one-half mile below the Rock Island bridge. It is only 10 feet wide and the same in height, and extends back 20 feet to a narrow passage which is almost closed by stalagmite. The site is difficult to reach, but disclosed a few fragments of pottery and some shell. The earth of the floor ascends rather steeply to the rear and contains many large rocks. It was only a camping place.

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MORGAN COUNTY

SPEERS CAVE

On the Brown property, 7 miles southeast of Stover, is a reported cave, which proved to be a natural tunnel 400 feet long. The drainage from several farms passes through it from ravines above. The lower entrance is 40 feet wide and 50 feet high, the upper entrance 20 feet wide and 10 feet high.

Natural bridges and tunnels of varying lengths and widths are rather common in this part of the Osage Valley.

HOUSE MOUNDS (43)

Southeast of Stover, beginning at the edge of the town, is a group of house mounds extending over an area having a very irregular outline, but fully half a mile across in any direction. They vary from 20 to 35 feet in diameter and are scattered promiscuously at intervals of 25 to 150 feet. The surface on which they are built reaches over a succession of small knolls and ridges with slopes of 4 or 5 degrees. Most of them are along the sides of a wide, shallow valley draining northward, and of two or three small tributary depressions coming into it from either side, though a number are also to be found beyond the slight watershed which separates this drainage area from that to the southward. They exist in woods, meadows, and cultivated ground, so that some of them retain their original form, others are flattened and widened, while still others are barely traceable. Probably some have been entirely effaced by plow and harrow.

II. CAVE EXPLORATIONS IN OTHER STATES

INTRODUCTION