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OZARK NATIONAL SCENIC RIVERWAYS, Mo.
- Most of the 1.5 million visitors who throng here each year arrive in the summer
heat, to canoe in federally protected rivers fed by dozens of springs that are
a chilly 50 degrees. But locals with deep roots in Missouri's southeast Ozarks,
along with those who manage this unique national park, say the best time to
visit is fall. That's when the sky turns a brilliant cobalt blue, and dry, cool
temperatures replace the July-August swelter.
Today, thick bluffs of hardwood trees that once competed with native
pines form a natural backdrop for the Current and Jacks Fork rivers, which are
prized by canoeists for their clarity and beauty.
in the early part of the 20th century,
the land surrounding these waters was barren, denuded of virgin pine forests
and the critters that once inhabited them. As early as the 1820s, big stands
of pine in the Ozark highlands were harvested and milled, said James E. Price,
National Park Service archaeologist and anthropologist, who traces family roots
in the area back to 1814.
Logging was interrupted by the Civil War, only to resume with gusto in 1882
by timber barons who pushed West with the railroad after deforesting Eastern
woodlands.
Companies such as the Pennsylvania-based Ozark Land and Lumber Co., and Missouri Land and Mining Co., exploited the Ozarks' pine forests for railroad ties and building materials. The Ozarks, the last big timber stand before the prairies, provided millions of board feet of virgin pine for building throughout the Great Plains until there was nothing left to log by 1915.
Residents hung on despite the devastation.
Inspired by naturalist Aldo Leopold, who had a cabin on the Current River, and
others in the conservation movement, locals and the young men of President Roosevelt's
Civilian Conservation Corps began to reforest and re-establish wildlife. Before
that, in the early 1920s, Missouri established state parks at four of the springs
that fed the two rivers: Round Spring, Montauk Springs, Alley Spring and Big
Spring.
“They went from an exploitive to a more tender treating of the landscape,”
Price said. The Ozarks, which he described as “a very generous and forgiving
environment,” responded, and nature healed itself.
A different, but still beautiful, landscape
Forests that were predominantly pine are now mostly deciduous hardwood with
a sprinkling of conifers. O'Donnell, the park's naturalist, said that in the
fall, a sea of orange oaks is punctuated by the golds and reds of several species
of maple, dogwood, redbud, ash, sassafras, sumac and the tulip tree.
“The best time to be here, in general, is the second week of October,
but that's subject to rain or a cold snap,” he said. “The month
of October is stunning.”
The landscape is also painted with Missouri wildflowers, whose colors change
with the seasons. “Fall is yellow and purple time,” O'Donnell said,
“With black-eyed Susan and goldenrod filling fields with splashes of yellow,
set off by the purples of aster, ironweed and joe pye weed.”
The forests in and around the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, including narrow,
steep-sided hollows, support deer, foxes, owls, raptors, wild turkey, an occasional
bobcat, and 196 species of birds. ‘
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