![]() ![]() Hungry for lead and zinc, Doe Run Corporation looked to public lands, applying to do a little “exploratory drilling” in Mark Twain National Forest near Hurricane Creek. But by the 1950s, we’d exhausted lead mining near the Big River, and by the mid-’70s we’d finished Black River, leaving behind 250 million tons of contaminated mining waste. Still today, Missouri produces 70 percent of US lead. Eighty miles to the northeast, in the Old Lead Belt near Farmington, we’ve mined lead for 300 years. It’s one of the most pristine places on the southern half of the trail. The valley walls rose away in a darkening gradient, from the chartreuse of riparian sycamore, to the forest green of the hillside oak, to the dark pine greens on the ridgetop. Light from the early evening sun speckled off the ripples of water curling around pebble shoals. Photo by Don Massey.Ī couple of days into our hike, we descended from the hills and forded the poorly named Hurricane Creek, a losing stream that dives underground into Missouri’s karst network. MINING A pillar of iron ore stands among trees in the Ozarks, where mining was once a major part of the local economy. But if one pays attention to the finer shades, the whole of the Ozarks’ history and present-both of its people and of the land-come into view. In 210 miles, you get only two or three big views. The OT can feel monotonous and tedious, a broad-scale meditation. When you’re not in a fire tower, the Ozarks sink and rise like sine waves, from hill to hollow to hill to hollow. The bedsheet description given above is an absolute lie. Like any good hike, The Ozark Trail is tough. ![]() Allison and I hiked from Thomasville to Taum Sauk Mountain in October, under hickories “glowing like candle flames,” as the conservationist Leonard Hall once wrote. The trail has been around in various stages of development since 1977, and it’s still at least two decades from being completed, if it ever gets there at all. The trail pushes through Mark Twain National Forest, the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, conservation areas, and a smidgen of private land where easements have been granted. My partner Allison and I hiked its 210 contiguous miles from Thomasville to the Highway 21 Trailhead near Taum Sauk Mountain. The 402 noncontiguous miles of the Ozark Trail run through those modest hills, perhaps one day to be regarded alongside more iconic trails as an American long-distance hiking gem. They are decidedly non-mountainous, despite often being called mountains.Īnd yet, isolated backcountry still dominates. The intense green of its canopy presses out any sense of topography. From a fire tower, the Ozark hills look uneven in the way of crinkled bedsheets on a mattress. But for the layperson with a camera, their beauty often fails to translate. That might seem ridiculous with Don Massey’s photos staring at you from these pages. The Ozarks are not very impressive in photographs. ![]()
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