Dead Branch Overlook | Atop a 250-foot bluff Laughing Spirit Gushing spring below |
R
ecently I went on a field trip with the UCM Geology club to several interesting Missouri locations, including Ha Ha Tonka State Park. Five miles southwest of Camdenton and encompassing approximately 3,000 acres along the Niangua Arm of the Lake of the Ozarks, it is a wonderful example of karst geology. Karst is an extraordinary landscape formed by soluble rock dissolution, including limestone and dolomite. Karst regions generally include high capacity water aquifers and caves.
Many natural structures in the park are the result of the collapse of ancient underground caverns. A natural bridge, 70 feet wide, spans 60 feet and reaches more than 100 feet high. The Coliseum is a steep-sided sinkhole measuring 500 feet long and 300 feet wide. Whispering Dell sink basin is 150 feet deep with two bluff shelters - Counterfeiter's Cave and Robber's Cave - both of which were used as criminal hide-outs in the 1830's. High bluffs rise two hundred and fifty feet over a gorge through which Ha Ha Tonka Spring, Missouri's ninth largest, discharges roughly 48 million gallons of water daily.
“There is no closed figure in nature. Every shape participates with another. No one thing is independent of another and one thing rhymes with another, and light gives them shape.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson
