Elephant Rocks State Park

There are a number of other state parks within the vicinty of Taum Sauk, & we were hoping to visit both 'Johnson's Shut-ins' & 'Elephant Rocks'. The former is very popular because it has a number of waterfalls, streams, & rivers where you can swim & play in the water. Unfortunately, this was still signposted as closed for renovations since a breach at a hydroelectric dam very close to Tom Sauk had sent billions of gallons of water through the park carving a path through the surrounding woodland & dumping tons of debris.

The Elephant Rocks State Park contains one of the more interesting geologic formations in the state of Missouri. The surrounding area has been weathered away to leave 1.5-billion year old granite boulders standing next to each other, a bit like a chain of elephants. Almost all of the rocks are within the seven-acre 'Elephant Rocks Natural Area'. The formation of the exposed rocks & boulders started during the Pre-Cambrian period, approximately 1.5 billion years ago. Magma (molten volvanic rock), accumulated below the earth's surface & slowly cooled forming red granite. As the overlying rock & earth was slowly removed by erosion, horizontal & vertical cracks developed within the granite which fractured the rock into huge, angular blocks. As groundwater penetrated into the cracks the angular edges were slowly eroded & rounded whilst the rock was still underground, forming giant, rounded, buried, boulders. Erosion of the surrounding area continued & eventually the boulders became exposed.

We followed the 'Braille Trail' around the park. This is designed for vision impaired people & utilizes different types of tactile paving & handrailing to indicate the location of a information sign written in Braille. At each location there is also a written description of a particular geological formation, or peculiarity about the close-by boulders. Although you are not allowed to use climbing equipment within the park, you can climb up most of the boulders.

It was quite hot on the day that we visited the park (90 degrees f +). Since most of the park is wooded we were in the shade quite a bit & so the high temperatures weren't too bad. The only time that we were really out in the sun was at the top of the park where signposts directed us up to the geological formation nicknamed the 'Chain of Elephants'. As we made our way out between a coulple of large boulders we found ourselves at the top of a granite dome looking at the 'elephant chain' seemingly balanced on the top of this almost spherical formation. The view was pretty spectacular & Cheryl even managed to stop 'Dumbo' the 27 feet tall, 35 feet long, & 17 feet wide 'elephant' boulder from moving by holding it up :)