Big Spring (Ozark National Scenic Riverways)

Big Spring rises at the foot of a dolomite bluff four miles south of Van Buren and pours into the Current River at an average of about 289 million gallons a day. It is sometimes billed as the biggest spring in the country. The Park Service counts three contenders, Big Spring, Idaho's Snake River spring complex and Florida's Silver Spring, all about the same size, and any of them may lead on a given day depending on the rain.

Dye put into the ground has shown that some of the water travels as far as 45 miles underground, taking seven to fourteen days, before it comes up here. On the way it dissolves rock. Park Service estimates of what it carries off in solution run from 70 to 175 tons a day, and the higher figure would hollow out a passage 30 feet high, 50 feet wide and a mile long every year. The dissolved rock helps give the water its blue. Wading, swimming and fishing are not allowed in the springs and spring branches, which hold animals found nowhere else.

Big Spring was one of Missouri's first state parks, from 1924, and Civilian Conservation Corps crews built its stone and timber dining lodge and cabins, among the best surviving examples of CCC rustic work. Missouri gave the park to the National Park Service in 1969. A rehabilitation of the lodge and cabins began in 2022, and the Park Service says they will reopen under a concession contract.