By: Washington University in St. Louis
Published: Mar 12, 2007 at 07:10
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2d6r7y
The Caves of St. Louis County and the Bridges of Madison County share a common theme: loss.
The former, a scholarly paper that appears as the sole entry of the journal Missouri Speleology (Vol. 45, No. 1, 2007) is a description of some of St. Louis County's 127 known caves and a warning that development over the past two centuries has eliminated or destroyed many caves in a state that could quite rightly call itself the Cave State. The latter is a tear-jerking novel, made into a movie by Clint Eastwood, about a doomed, unlikely love affair, a hallmark of the '90s with all the permanence of the Backstreet Boys.
Caves, though, are in trouble, at least in St. Louis County, Missouri, says co-author Robert Criss, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
"Caves have been discarded by developers with the same impunity as trees," said Criss. "Things are developing so rapidly in St. Louis County and elsewhere that we should try a little harder to protect our natural habitat. There is no law in Missouri to protect caves on private land, and we don't seem to have any protocol as to what is acceptable. The loss of caves is not on anyone's radar screen, and I think it should be."
Caves are a feature of karst terrain, along with sinkholes, springs, and "losing" streams that disappear into "swallow holes" and resurface in other areas. Criss and his collaborators, Washington University earth and planetary sciences graduate student Jennifer Lippmann and research colleagues Everett Criss and G.R. Osburn, studied most of the 127 reported caves in St. Louis County - which excludes St. Louis city - a county of 508 square miles with a population (2000 Census) of 1,016,315, comprising nearly one-third of the St. Louis area's population of approximately 2.7 million.
Legendary caves of Missouri
Caves in this karst region are legendary, having served over time as beer storage sites, ballrooms, taverns, speakeasies and disposal sites. Farther north, outside Hannibal, who could forget Injun Joe's lingering death in the cave that was gated after Tom and Becky Thatcher became lost there?
cont.: http://tinyurl.com/2d6r7y