Taum Sauk Mountain State Park

Taum Sauk Mountain rises to 1,772 feet above sea level, the highest point in Missouri, and an easy walk from the parking lot reaches the top. The St. Francois Mountains around it are the worn roots of volcanoes that erupted almost 1.5 billion years ago, when fine-grained rhyolite formed at the surface and coarse granite cooled below. Shallow seas later buried the knobs under almost a mile of dolomite and sandstone; uplift of the Ozarks and the erosion that followed stripped much of it away again and exposed the old rock.

That rock shows in the glades, rocky openings where desert-adapted life such as the eastern collared lizard and the sundrop flower lives among prairie plants like little bluestem and rattlesnake master, kept open by prescribed burns. Much of the park lies in the 7,028-acre St. Francois Mountains Natural Area, the largest natural area in the state.

The moderately rugged Mina Sauk Falls loop goes to the tallest waterfall in Missouri, which in wet weather drops 132 feet down volcanic ledges into a clear pool, and in any weather looks over the deepest valley in the state, with up to 700 feet between the creek and the ridgetops. A mile below the falls on the Ozark Trail, Devil's Tollgate is an 8-foot-wide passage through rhyolite 30 feet high and 50 feet long, and the trail continues to Johnson's Shut-Ins, 12.8 miles in all. Taum Sauk Creek, with an undeveloped watershed, is a designated Outstanding State Resource Water.