Roubidoux Spring EarthCache EarthCache
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Roubidoux Spring EarthCache
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Located Waynesvilles Roy Laughlin City Park. Close to parking. Family and Handicap friendly. Permission has been granted by the Parks Department.
Roubidoux Creek EarthCache
The Roubidoux Spring is part of a unique karst topographic system of the Ozarks. Karst topography is a landscape created by groundwater dissolving sedimentary rock such as limestone. This creates landforms such as shafts, tunnels, caves, and sinkholes. Groundwater seeps into and through these landforms. The result is a scenic landscape that is beautiful but fragile, and vulnerable to erosion and pollution. The recharge area for the Roubidoux Spring is full of caves, losing streams, stream captures, and other features associated with karst topography. To log this EarthCache you will need to perform various tasks that will familiarize you with some of these terms and karst topography of the Ozarks.
The Roubidoux Spring is in the Gasconade Formation with varying flow from 3,420,000 to 103,000,000 gallons per day. The low flow measurement was in August 1934. The variable flow demonstrates the close relationship to sinkholes and the fissure recharge system in the area. The caverns above the spring may represent former outlets of the spring during the last ice ages and as erosion has lowered ground level. The spring once emerged from a cave opening, but it is now permanently back flooded by a dam built to keep it out of Roubidoux Creek. A large, new retaining wall above the spring helps to maintain the gravel road above from the spring at high flow--the spring and creek have washed the road away more than once. In flood, Roubidoux Spring can reach 200 cfs in flow.
The Roubidoux Spring is a remarkable natural resource in its own right, but the fact is the spring exits a major cave system adds another intriguing characteristic to the spot. Roubidoux Spring is one of the most popular cavern and cave diving sites in the state of Missouri. Roubidoux Spring is open to certified cavern/cave divers who must check in and present their cave/cavern certification card prior to diving. Divers have reported finding old musket balls, horseshoes, saddle blankets, and gun barrels in the area where the spring once emerged prior to the flooding of the opening.
The Roubidoux Spring is located in Laughlin Park. A little known fact about Laughlin Park is that it is a certified site on the National Park Service National Historic Trail as an encampment on the Trail of Tears.
Pulaski County is noted for its “bullseye chert” where concentric rings of silica collected during its formation causing the bullseye patterns. Chert in Missouri originally occurs chiefly in limestone formations, where it is formed as nodules, lenses, and irregular forms in and between limestone beds. Chert withstands weathering due to its great hardness and makes up most of the gravel found in the Roubidoux Creek streambed. Arrowheads are known to be made from this local chert.
The Roubidoux Creek is a losing stream in some sections and a gaining stream in others. A losing stream is one with a bed, which allows water to flow directly into the groundwater system. Streams that receive groundwater discharge are gaining streams. The level of water in the stream is below the water table. This also is true for lakes and wetlands that receive groundwater discharge. Very close to the Roubidoux Spring this karst process is visible.
To log this cache you must email me one of the following (not including the extra credit):
1. Find a piece of bullseye chert and take a picture of it and your GPSr together. With the Spring in the background.
2. Go to these coordinates N 37 49.092 W 092 11.572 and send the number on the bridge where the creek goes from a losing stream to a gaining stream.
For Extra Credit:
1. Where do divers go to get permission to dive in the spring?
2. The Roubidoux Spring is listed in the 20 largest springs of Missouri. Which one is it?
Thank you to Ozark4 for all of the help in developing this Earthcache!
Congrats! To both Ozark4 and RickNJoy for being both the FTF's on this cache. :)
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