Unspoiled Beauty: A Personal Guide to Missouri Wilderness

282 Pages·1999·0.79 MB·English

by  Charles J. Farmer

Unspoiled Beauty:
A Personal Guide to
Missouri Wilderness
Charles J. Farmer
University of Missouri Press
Unspoiled Beauty
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Unspoiled Beauty
A Personal Guide to Missouri Wilderness
Charles J. Farmer
University of Missouri Press
Columbia and London
Copyright © 1999 by
The Curators of the University of Missouri
University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201
Printed and bound in the United States of America
All rights reserved
5 4 3 2 1 03 02 01 00 99
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Farmer, Charles J.
Unspoiled beauty : a personal guide to Missouri wilderness /
Charles J. Farmer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8262-1230-1 (alk. paper)
1. Wilderness areas—Missouri. I. Title.
QH76.5.M8F37 1999
333.78'2'09778—dc21 99-30420
CIP
This paper meets the requirements of the
American National Standard for Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984.
Cover design: Kristie Lee
Text design: Mindy Shouse
Typesetter: Crane Composition, Inc.
Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Typefaces: Giovanni and Palatino
For Brittany and Scotty
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Contents
Foreword by John Karel ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1. History of the Land prior to Wilderness
Designation 1
2. The Birth of Missouri Wilderness—
Battles and Victories 13
3. Bell Mountain Wilderness 29
4. Devil’s Backbone Wilderness 47
5. Hercules Glades Wilderness 65
6. Irish Wilderness 85
7. Mingo Wilderness 103
8. Paddy Creek Wilderness 129
9. Piney Creek Wilderness 147
10. Rockpile Wilderness 177
11. Wilderness Tips 189
12. The Future of Missouri Wilderness 227
Recommended Reading 263
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Foreword
wi l d e r n e s s i s a word to conjure with. It draws up images
rooted deep in the consciousness. The Old Testament depicts
wilderness on the one hand as a place of loneliness and temptation,
but also as a refuge of prayer and communion. Our American en-
counter with the untamed “New World” evoked both experiences.
Our forebears struggled against the wilderness, to settle and civi-
lize the land; at the same time it was out of the wilderness that we
were to bring forth a new nation. Some part of our national spirit
has always found solace in the untrammeled American landscape.
Our national park system grew out of this instinct. And so, later,
did the national wilderness system. In 1964 America decided offi-
cially that we should always retain at least some remnant of the
original wilderness out of which we had built our nation. This wild
remnant was to be preserved as a reminder of our national identity
and as a source of physical refreshment and inspiration. Part of the
wisdom of America’s commitment to wilderness is that it offers an
antidote to our tendency toward arrogance about the natural
world. In wilderness, we restrict ourselves from normal manage-
ment and development of the land, because we recognize that there
is much we still have to learn from nature and that it is only pru-
dent to set some land aside where we intrude as little as possible,
ix