Garden Center & Plant Nursery in [City], [State]

Springs

One of my earliest memories of springs is from camping with my family at Bennett Springs State Park. We spent a rainy night in a leaky canvas tent, my mom strategically positioning our sleeping bags between the drips. The next day my dad took me fishing. To his probable disappointment, I wasn’t that interested in trout. Instead, I found myself drawn to the spring, the source of the stream and, for that matter, the fish. As I wandered upstream, a pool of the most amazing blue color suddenly appeared. I found my mind irresistibly drawn into the mysterious underworld from which it rose.

I have been fascinated by springs ever since. I even planned work trips and vacations around them. In Florida, I swam with manatees in a crystal-clear spring. I marveled at the vast curtains of water spilling from basalt ledges at Thousand Springs in Idaho, and in the Grand Canyon watched in awe as Thunder River, really a gigantic spring, gushed like an oversized fire-hydrant from a sheer limestone wall. At Machu Picchu, I was astounded by the ingenious plumbing system used by the Incas to bring water from a mountain spring into their homes and temples.

But I didn’t have to travel that far to see amazing springs. Many of Missouri’s springs are just as majestic and beautiful as those anywhere. Our springs have their own unique characteristics and charms, adding interest and intrigue to the landscape. I find my life enriched by their presence, even in small ways, as when I’m wade-fishing and feel those little hidden springs, the pockets of extra-cold water suddenly tingling my feet; or the sight of a watercress-filled spring branch on a cold, gray day, glorious green against the dead brown of winter.

Springs have enriched our lives in so many ways, yet we rarely pause to appreciate them today. My spring book is an attempt to initiate and fill that pause, through image and text, with an appreciation of the ways that springs have touched, and continue to touch, our lives. Missouri’s springs are valuable natural assets. Like precious jewels, they should be saved and safe-guarded forever.

Springs can be as small as a seep issuing from a rock face to a giant boil erupting from deep underground. The two buttons below show the variety in magnitude, from tiny springs erupting after heavy rain near Pearson Creek in May, 2025, to Meramec Spring in high flow, December 2015.

Pearson Cr. springs, 2025 Meramec Spring, 2015

Memorable Sinkholes

Springfield has lots of sinkholes. Some are steep-sided pits, often with exposed bedrock. Others are shallow, bowl-shaped depressions. Sinkholes were here long before the city, of course. They were mere curiosities, at first, but as the city grew, they became challenges to development—and often, nuisances.

Those that held water after rains became breeding grounds for mosquitos. Some overtopped after storms and flooded adjacent properties. In response, citizens began filling sinkholes or diverting runoff away from them. Sinkholes were often filled with rocks, or soil, or even junk and trash. Some became handy disposal pits for household sewage. Eventually, we learned that these practices could pollute shallow wells and springs.

In sinkhole country, there is always the potential for “collapse,” where earth suddenly slumps into a void. This is a common occurrence in the Springfield area, especially after heavy rains. To my knowledge, no one in Springfield has ever been injured by a sinkhole collapse. But many collapses have caused property damage, especially subsidence and cracking of nearby foundations. Here are some descriptions of notable sinkholes and collapses in and near Springfield. Scroll down to the photo gallery to see photos
.
Springfield Area:
In 1898, Edward Shepard, a professor at Drury College, described prominent sinkholes in Springfield. A sinkhole at the corner of Cherry and Dollison Streets (now John Q. Hammons Parkway) had a cave at both ends. It’s hard to imagine it now, but Shepard said the city used the sinkhole for the “conveyance of sewage.”

Bill Hayes, at one time the City Geologist for Springfield, noted that in 1925 a circus elephant caused a sinkhole collapse near Jones Spring. The elephant’s feet dropped several feet into the ground and the animal had to be pulled out. Hayes also wrote that in 1977 two steers were “trapped” in a sinkhole that formed suddenly near the intersection of Cox Road and Village Lane. The bovine had to be pulled out using an “auto wrecker.”

In December 2006, the water of Sequiota Spring in southern Springfield suddenly turned red, an unusual occurrence in the absence of rain. A few days later, it was discovered that a sinkhole had collapsed about a mile east of the spring. A four-inch water line sagged across the collapsed sinkhole. It is not known whether the pipe leaked first, causing the sinkhole collapse, or the collapse occurred first, breaking the water line. In any case, water from the leaking pipe scoured red clay from the sinkhole and flushed it into the conduits heading toward Sequiota Spring.

Sewage Lagoons:
On Oct. 31, 1968, a sinkhole opened in the bottom of a sewage lagoon in the city of Republic, releasing about four million gallons of sewage into the subsurface. Shuyler Creek and “several domestic wells and springs” east of Republic were contaminated.

In May 1978, a circular sinkhole formed in the bottom of the West Plains sewage lagoon, sucking 30 to 40 million gallons of sewage into the groundwater system. Previous dye tracing indicated the sewage would flow underground toward Mammoth Spring, on the Missouri-Arkansas line, about 20 miles southeast. Bacteria levels in Mammoth Spring shot up as dissolved oxygen went down. The Arkansas Health Department warned people not to swim or boat in the Spring River, a popular float stream born at Mammoth Spring.

Other Sinkholes:
In March 2005, a large sinkhole formed in a farmer’s field near Exeter in Barry County, near the headwaters of Big Sugar Creek. The sinkhole continued to grow and deepen until it was 300 feet long, 85 feet wide, and over 100 feet deep. The big sinkhole became a local tourist attraction.

In August 2006, a homeowner in Nixa was reading the newspaper when he heard a loud crash. He thought a truck had hit his house. But when he ran outside, he discovered that his garage, with his car in it, had fallen into a sinkhole 90 feet deep. Nixa police had to close off streets near the collapse because of the large number of sightseers.

On April 18, 2017, Mike Kromrey, Joey Waitman and Loring Bullard were floating Wilsons Creek when they came upon a remarkable sight—a whirlpool in the stream, sucking water into a two-foot-wide hole in the creek bed. Over the next several months, this swallow hole continued to grow, so that by November 2017 the entire flow of Wilson Creek was going into it. The lost flow almost certainly goes to Rader Spring, along Wilsons Creek a few miles south. Videos of the evolution of this swallow hole can be seen on this website under Resources: Swallow Hole.

Grand Gulf, Missouri’s largest sinkhole, represents the collapse of a cave system feeding water into Mammoth Spring. At the bottom of the huge sinkhole is a cave entrance. The cave is now plugged with mud and debris, but at one time it could be entered and explored. This was done by an intrepid explorer, Luella Owens, in the 1890s. She took a boat into the cave, where she saw “multitudes” of “small, eyeless fish, pure white and perfectly fearless.” Officials at Grand Gulf, now a state park, would like to re-open this passage and see if cavefish are still there. Attempts to do this are described in my book Living Waters: The Springs of Missouri.

The Gulf, a large, deep sinkhole in Wayne County, has a strikingly blue pool at the bottom. Don Rimbach, a cave diver, once reported that he saw cavefish hovering near the water surface “like goldfish at feeding time.” The Gulf may be connected to large springs along the Black River, about two miles to the east.

Devil’s Den, originally called Panther’s Den, is a large, steep-sided sinkhole near Fordland. The Fordland Band once played on a wooden platform down in the sinkhole. The sinkhole is on private property and is inaccessible to the public.