Taum Sauk Mountain, MO

Elevation: 1,772 ft.

Summit Attained: 04/16/08, Approximately 2 p.m.

As I stood at the gas pump in the sleepy town of Ironton, Missouri, a quick look around was all that was necessary to tell that there wasn’t a lot going on in.  Nestled in the rolling Ozark foothills, Ironton was exactly what I had expected.  The cars were older.  The people drove by slowly, not in a rush to get anywhere in particular.  They all knew that there wasn’t really anywhere to go. Even the gas pump seemed to be from another era.  I decided that whatever it lacked in the way of activities, at least Ironton was an authentic Ozark town, off the beaten path and determined to stay that way. 

I followed State Route 21 to its intersection with State Route 72.  There, the two became State Route 21/72, which I followed for another 4.5 miles to County Road CC (on the right).  There is a sign to let you know that County Road CC leads to Taum Sauk Mountain.

After driving for about three miles on County Road CC, I made a mistake.  I came to a fork in the road, and I went left… Just up the road, a construction crew was working on something on the side of the road, and I just managed to squeeze through the mess of equipment and park my car.  Across the grass from my car was a tall observation tower that looked a lot like the structures that adorn so many of the East Coast highpoint summits.  Figuring that I was at the top of Missouri, I climbed the tower and snapped a bunch of pictures of the surrounding forested mountains before I descended to tag the USGS survey marker...

...No sign of the marker anywhere around the tower.  Perhaps this wasn’t the highpoint after all.  Given that I had seen several signs for Taum Sauk down the road, it was strange that there was nothing to mark the end of the line.  I wasn’t coming back to Missouri anytime soon, so I decided to get back in my car and explore a little more.  Returning to the fork in the road, I now went right.

Soon my efforts were rewarded, as I came to the entranceway to Taum Sauk Mountain State Park.  A little less than two miles later, I arrived at the trailhead parking lot and parked the car.  The trailhead facilities were obviously new (Taum Sauk is one of the newest Missouri state parks), and the highpoint trail itself was, shall we say, well-maintained, paved to perfection for its entire .2 mile length. 

The elusive highpoint marker turned out to be a marble slab fixed into the ground at the end of the trail, with a USGS disc mounted nearby.  There was a bench and a summit log, but a swarm of wasps had taken up residence on top of the logbook container, and no amount of stick tossing seemed to phase them.  Eventually, I decided to take the loss, and returned to my car, bound for Independence, Missouri and the west.