Watershed Committee Articles
Vive La Dolomieu
By: Loring Bullard When we can find the time, my fishing buddy and I head to a place where water, rocks and fish intersect in a most satisfying way—an Ozark stream. We have several favorite float/fishing trips. Scenic wooded valleys and green pastures; cool, clear flowing water; deep blue holes; and exciting riffles attract us, year after year, to these wild and relatively unspoiled places. In my mind’s eye, I can see us on a stream now, drifting silently below a majestic bluff. My friend Jud, the more dedicated and skillful fisherman, continues to ply his sport, watching his line intently where it disappears beneath the reflecting plane of the water surface. His easily distracted paddling partner is laid back, gazing up at the rising face of the black-stained bluff towering over us.
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Natural Resource Protection—1904
By: Loring Bullard
In 2004, Missourians celebrated the bicentennial of an amazing feat of exploration launched from their doorsteps. Loaded with scientific equipment and trinkets for trading, Lewis and Clark headed west from St. Louis in 1804, following President Jefferson’s directive to traverse and explore what had just become the country’s largest ever real estate acquisition. Upon their return, these men described a wealth of natural resources just waiting for an eager new nation to claim—land, furs, forests and minerals that would fuel the economy, house the expanding population and, most importantly, fulfill the prophesy of manifest destiny.
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Missouri’s Healing Springs
By: Loring Bullard
A visitor today to Pertle Springs in Warrensburg, Missouri would probably not be impressed with the old mineral spring found there. Gurgling out into a concrete basin, the spring water is somewhat repulsive—smelling of rotten eggs and imparting orange stains to leaves and rocks in its path. If someone suggested the visitor taste the water, she might hesitate. There is a heightened awareness of water pollution these days, and besides, her instincts might tell her not to put anything that looks or smells that way into her mouth. And yet, at one time, thousands of people came here to do just that. They were led to believe, and many did believe, that these waters could heal.
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Missouri: The “Spring State”
By: Loring Bullard
With over 5,000 named caves, Missouri has been nicknamed “The Cave State.” However, it could just as appropriately be called “The Spring State.” For where there are caves, there are, or at least once were, springs. Springs, in fact, give rise to caves. Both are features of karst terrain, a porous landscape that can form where limestone and dolomite bedrock predominate. Weakly acidic, downward percolating rainwater dissolves and widens openings in these rocks, eventually producing flowing spring systems. Springs are more than curiosities. They are a karst region’s lifeblood.
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A Historied Creek
By: Loring Bullard
Jordan Creek, Springfield’s founding waters, flows through the heart of the city. John Polk Campbell moved his family to its banks in 1830, raising corn where the Springfield Square is today. Other settlers, mostly from Tennessee at first, soon followed, referring to the little stream as “Campbell’s Creek.” At about the time of the Civil War, when the settlement had grown to a few thousand residents, the stream got a new name, or nickname—Jordan Creek. By that time, the small but steadily expanding community had already begun to corrupt its founding waters.
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