With temperatures soaring in the middle of a week’s long heat wave, exploring a cave was a great indoor, but out in nature activity. Now that I’ve lived in Missouri for a year and a half, I am starting to expand the circle of travel from home. At about an hour and a half away, Leasburg, Missouri was well worth the trip to Onondaga.
While Missouri has more caves than most U.S. states, we are beat out by a handful of others, Tennessee being number one with 9285 caves. On the science side of cave creation, rain water travels over and mixes with the limestone and dolomite, native to this region of the Ozarks, and drips down through openings eventually creating a solution type cave like Onondaga. The constant dripping of water, over time, leads to various natural rock formations.
It didn’t occur to me until the information session prior to the guided tour that I’d need a jacket on a sweltering day, but the average temperature during ninety minute long tour was 57 degrees (F). The trails throughout the cave total about one mile with some steep grades up and down that were sometimes slick.
Occasionally I had a drip on my head and I was impressed with all of the water still coming down in spite of the drought at the time. There were paved and lighted pathways, but little ducking to do compared to my more recent spelunking experiences.
Our knowledgeable guide said their bat population has dwindled, but there was an active population of frogs, salamanders, newts and crayfish. The cave is so far below the surface that the temperature remains steady all year long regardless of the outside world. We were told that previous owners sensationalized the stories on the tours and while we did see bones of a bear, the guide said due to the size of the cave entrances, it’s likely the bones were brought in to heighten tourist’s interest prior to the state taking over the cave.
It is rumored that weddings were held in the cave and also lavish parties during prohibition. The park guides asked visitors not to touch anything as the caves have already sustained so much damage in the past and we could see remnants of a submerged dock in one of the natural pools.
So many places of note, here in Missouri, began with a mill on a river. In this case, it was the Meramec River and after the first mill burned down, a new landowner built a second mill; his name was William Henry Rollision Davis. A local discovered the cave beyond the spring that fed into the mill in 1886 and explored it. The local, Charles Christopher bought the land over the cave, along with a friend. They gave tours of the cave and ended up in a legal dispute with Davis that lasted over 50 years.
Since it’s discovery in 1886, there have been numerous owners and disputes over the cave. Some battles were from the land above and others, with claims from beneath the earth’s surface (after purchasing neighboring property and tunneling through another cave into Onondaga).
The last private owner was Lester B. Dill and his dying wish was for the state of Missouri to have right of first refusal on the sale. In 1982, Onondaga, which means “people of the mountain” in Iroquois, was officially made a state park and named as a National Natural Landmark. It was dedicated to Dill.
The cave features and their specialized vocabulary were fun. The growths formed from the cave ceiling were called stalactites and the formations built upwards from the cave floor were called stalagmites (the latter I remember by it sounding closer to stagnation, which I think could more likely happen where water pools).
While it was too hot to comfortably explore the rest of the park, I’d like to come back to check out the 1300+ acres. People can camp, fish, boat, swim, hike and picnic there as well as explore caves.