by Teresa » Jan 12, 2006 9:42 pm
Bretz does make a big deal about cave pearls in Skaggs.
More recent reports made a big deal about how the pearls had been vandalized, and were all gone. However, many are still there--non-geologists don't know what Bretz described as 'pearls' and are looking for the wrong thing. The cave is now gated, with access permitted but controlled by the MCKC.
Mr. Winkler, if you have not been to Pulaski County since the early 1970s, you would hardly recognize the place. It as become quite urbanized, as the Fort and its "support services" have greatly expanded. This is a good thing and a bad thing. Parts of it are now indistinguishable from suburbia, and other points look like a backlot version of Vegas on a shoestring budget, but don't spare the mercury lights and neon. Downtown Waynesville is pretty much as it always has been, but out along I-44--whoo-boy! Almost like the real world now. Yes, I visited there in the early 1960s, the 1970s, and drove through it just last summer. The glow on the night sky will blind you.