Built in about A.D. 150, this massive mound is thought to be the largest prehistoric earthwork in the Illinois River Valley. It is the largest known mound built by Indians of the Western Hopewell of Havana culture. Found along major rivers of the midwest, mounds of the Havana culture were usually built over the log-covered tombs of prominent leaders. Ceremonial and everyday items were often placed with the burials. It has been estimated that this two-acre, 14 foot high mound required about 1,700,000 basket loads of earth to construct.

Because of its size and strategic location opposite Spoon River, Rockwell Mound was probably the most important of the Havana site's more than twenty mounds. Havana was a trading and ceremonial center with trade routes that spanned much of the midcontinent.

This mound was not scientifically verified until 1986, when a small test trench yielded pottery fragments and a variety of other identifiable material. Individual basket loads of earth were clearly visible in the walls of the trench. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.

Silver Lake was established in 1962 with the completion of the dam across Silver Creek, which is one of the major tributaries draining into the Kaskaskia River. The Lake provides the water supply to the nearby City of Highland.

The Silver Creek region has a heavy concentration of archaeological sites, indicating the area was an optimal location for habitation in a number of prehistoric periods. Preservation of these sites provides the tangible ties to the past that help give the region its rich character.

Early thriving Osage River post, Osceola was settled during the middle 1830's largely by Southerns. The settlement and its first store were known as the "crossing of the Osage at Crow and Crutchfield's," until the name of the Indian warrior was adopted. In 1841 Osceola became the seat of newly organized St. Clair County, named for Gen Arthur St. Clair of the Revolutionary War.

In the Civil War, Osceola was the first town of wealth and consequence victimized in the atrocious raids characteristic of the war on the Missouri-Kansas border. Kansas troops under Gen. James H. Lane, on Sept. 23, 1861, looted and burned the defenseless town to ashes. Lane reported taking a vast amount of stores. $150,000 in bank deposits was saved, being removed before the raid.

In 1860, Osceola (inc.twp.) had a 2,077 pop. and was a trade center and a distribution point for goods shipped on the Osage River. In 1865, it was almost in ruins with a population of some 183. Osceola did not enjoy renewed growth until the Kansas City, Osceola, and Southern R.R. (Frisco) was completed to this point, 1885.

Osceola serves as a trading center and seat of justice for a grain, poultry, and livestock farming county. Both the Ozark Highland and Western Prairie regions of Missouri are represented in the area.

The Osage Indians gave up their claims to this region in their first Missouri land cession, 1808, and many of their campsites have been found in the county. Evidences of prehistoric man have also been found and one cave dwelling at Monegaw Springs has yielded a number of artifacts.

Here lived Waldo P. Johnson (1817-1885), U.S. Senator, Confederate States Senator from Missouri, and President of the State Constitutional Convention, 1875. Here also lived his son, Thomas M. Johnson (1851-1919), noted Greek scholar and bibliophile.

Among points of interest are the Boy Scout Reservation, to the east, and near there a pioneer log-cabin home built in the early 1850's, one of the few to survive the Civil War. Two miles south of town, in a scenic woodland valley, is the junction of the Sac and Osage Rivers.

Historic town of the Osage River Valley, Warsaw was laid out in 1837 as the seat of Benton County, organized two years earlier. Lewis Bledsoe's Osage ferry, started in 1831 for traffic over the Boonville-Springfield Road (parts of which were also called Old, Military, or Wire Road), was east of town. A rival ferry, Mark Fristoe's, was to the west.

Warsaw became prominent as a frontier river port and distribution point. A land office was located here from 1855-61. The Butterfield Overland Mail had a station in Warsaw, 1851-1861, and other stops in Benton County were Burn's, north of here, and to the south, Bailey's. Today Warsaw is a tourist center, is at the head of the 129-mile Lake of the Ozarks formed by Bagnell Dam, 1931.

Warsaw and Benton County suffered in the war years, 1861-1865, from guerrilla raids and troop movements. Warsaw was a Union post, and the Christian Church, built in 1840, was a headquarters. Before Gen. Joseph O. Shelby's troops raided Warsaw in Oct., 1863, Union troops withdrew. Pro-Southern State Guards in bloody conflict dispersed home guards north, near Cole Camp, June, 1861.

Centrally located in a county lying both in Ozark and prairie regions, Warsaw serves a resort, lumber, and livestock farming area. Named for U.S. Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, the county was first settled about 1825 by Frenchmen Narcisse Pensineau and German John F. Hogle whose trading post site is now Hogle Creek. Prehistoric animal bones have been found in the county, an area know to early French gold and silver seekers and to explorer and trapper. Though Osage Indians ceded the region, 1808, they and other tribes had large villages in the county until 1835.

First American settler was probably the fur trader Ezekiel Williams early 1831 on Cole Camp Creek. Many Southern pioneers and numerous Germans soon followed. The county, in the 1840's, was the scene of the notorious Turk-Jones feud or Slicker War as it was called because victims were often slicked (whipped) with hickory withes.

The first bridge across the Osage here, a swinging structure, built 1895, crashed 1913. Once the area had 8 such structures. Today's Warsaw highway bridge dates from 1927 and the Osage Arm bridge from 1938.

Although Devils Tower has long been a prominent landmark in northwestern Wyoming, the origin of the mammoth rock obelisk remains somewhat obscure. Geologists agree that Devils Tower consists of molten rock forced upwards from deep within the earth. Debate continues, however, as to whether Devils Tower is solidified lava from the neck of an ancient volcano, the walls of which eroded long ago, or whether it is a sheet of molten rock which was injected between rock layers. The characteristic furrowed columns are apparently the result of uniformly-arranged cracks which appeared during the cooling of the volcanic magma. Geologic estimates have placed the age of Devils Tower at greater than fifty million years, although it is likely that erosion uncovered the rock formation only one or two million years ago.

The unique geological attributes of Devils Tower stimulated several early preservation efforts, In 1892 Wyoming Senator Francis E. Warren persuaded the General Land Office to create a timber reserve which surrounded the Tower. Senator Warren also launched an unsuccessful effort to declare the entire area a national park. In 1906 Congress passed the Antiquities Act which empowered the President to bestow national monument status upon federally owned lands that contain historic landmarks, historic or prehistoric structures, and other significant historic or scientific objects. President Theodore Roosevelt quickly invoked the Antiquities Act, designating Devils Tower the nation's first national monument in 1906. The National Park Service was created in 1916 and eventually assumed administrative control of all national monuments.

Here in Missouri's central Ozarks, Pulaski County was organized 1833, and named for Revolutionary War general, Polish Count Casimir Pulaski. Once roamed by Indians and French trappers, the county is part of land ceded by the Osage in 1808. Southern pioneers were early settlers, attracted by fine springs, wooded hills honeycombed by caves, and Big Piney and Gasconade Rivers.

Waynesville, in scenic Roubidoux Creek Valley, became the county seat 1843, but court first met here, 1835. Named for Rev. War Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne, the town was a stage stop on St. Louis to Springfield Road, also called Wire Road for telegraph line strung by Union Army. French explorer Du Tisne traveled this former Indian Trail in 1719. Cherokee Indians camped here on their 1837 "Trail of Tears" removal to Okla.

In the Civil War, the Confederate flag was raised at the courthouse in spring of 1861. In June, 1862, Union Col. Albert Sigel's troops built fort overlooking Waynesville's courthouse square to guard military supply road to Springfield. The county suffered guerrilla raids and skirmishes.

In Pulaski County's Mark Twain National Forest acreage, established in 1935, is Fort Leonard Wood. Founded in 1940 as World War II training and replacement center, it became a permanent military reservation in 1958. Named for Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood, the Fort, by 1960, was the nation's largest center for training U.S. Army Engineers.

The county, after the Civil War, grew as lumbering and general farming area. On route of the Frisco R.R., built through the county 1869, the towns of Dixon, Crocker, and Richland were laid out and Swedeborg was founded by Swedish immigrants, 1878. Among other communities are Big Piney, Devils Elbow, Laguey, Palace, St. Roberts.

Points of interest include views of the Gasconade at Portuguese Point and the Big Piney at Devils Elbow; Miller Spring, one of 23 ebb and flow springs in U.S., near Big Piney; Schlicht Mill near Crocker; Indian and Inca caves near Waynesville; Moccasin Bend Wildlife Refuge on Gasconade River; and, at Waynesville, Pulaski County's 4th courthouse built in 1904. Many prehistoric artifacts have been found in the county.

Maries County, in the central Ozarks of Missouri, was organized in 1855 and named for the Big and Little Maries Rivers. The area, in territory ceded by Osage Indians in 1808, was roamed by French trappers who early named the Gasconade, Bourbeuse, and Maries, the county's rivers. Pioneers from the South and other parts of Missouri came in the 1820's, and in the 1850's brought a large German immigration and a number of Irish.

Vienna, the county seat, was laid out on the watershed divide between the Osage and Gasconade in 1855 by Reuben Terrill on 70 acres donated by William Shockley. The town is said to be named Vienna as a compromise resulting from county Judge V.G. Latham's wanting it named "Vie Anna" in memory of a relative. The courthouse, the county's third, was built in 1943.

In Vienna are the Old Jail and Felker Log House Museums of pioneer relics. The gable-roofed, limestone jail was built in 1858, by a Mr. Barnhart at the cost of $2,500. The Felker Log House, built 1855 by John Felker, native of Hanover, Germany, was moved near the jail in 1959.

Maries County, encompassing 526 square miles of wooded hills, fertile valley, and tableland prairies, lies in a general farming area. In the Civil War, the county saw little action, but Vienna was occupied as a minor Union post. After the was, lead was mined briefly in the 1870's and zinc in the 1880's.

Belle, the county's largest town, grew up along the route of the Chicago, Rock Is., & Pac. R.R., built through a small portion of north Maries County, 1904. Among other communities are High Gate, Safe, Hayden, Brinktown, and Vichy, laid out 1880 near mineral spring, an early noted health spa.

Prehistoric Indian mounds and artifacts have been found along the county's rivers, and an ancient Indian trail in the county later became a road between St. Louis and Springfield. In the 1820's, Shawnee and Delaware Indians had a village at Indian Ford on the Gasconade River. An Indian pictograph of a deer remains on a bluff above the Gasconade near Paydown Spring. The spring, with a measured 11,600,000 gals. daily flow from several gravel beds, is the site of early grist mills and a wooden mill.

In this vicinity is a prehistoric archeological site discovered in 1973 by a team of Texas Highway Department archeologists. Scientific excavations have produced evidence that the site was a major camp ground for prehistoric peoples, particularly during the Archaic Period (2,000-8,000 years ago). More than 150 fireplaces, numerous projective plainview points, and several types of spear points have been uncovered. In 1982, archeologists discovered the skeleton of a human female, 10,000 to 13,000 years old, that became known as the Leanderthal Lady.

On the hills above lovely Current River, Doniphan was founded, 1847, and became the seat of Ripley County in 1860. George Lee gave 50 acres for the town and named it for Mexican War Col. Alexander W. Doniphan. The county, organized in 1833, is named for War of 1812 Gen. E.W. Ripley. Van Buren, the first county seat, was in the area detached from Ripley to form Carter County in 1859.

The Irish wilderness, land of legend and romance, lies in northwestern Ripley and in adjoining counties north and west. There in 1858, Father John Hogan, attracted by cheap government land, founded a Catholic colony. By 1859, forty families, many of them Irish, had settled in the area and the colony chapel was built near Pine in Ripley County. The colony disappeared during the Civil War.

In the war, brutal guerrilla bands overran the county and in Sept., 1864, Doniphan was burned by Union troops as Confederate Gen. Sterling Price's army was moving into Ripley County from Arkansas. Devastated by the war, Doniphan grew with the coming of a branch of the Missouri Pacific R.R. in 1883 and development of a lumber industry.

Here in the eastern border of Missouri's Ozarks, Doniphan is the seat of a lumbering and general farming county. Attracted by plentiful game, fine waterways, and fertile bottom land, Southern pioneers settled the area in the early 1800's. Lemuel Kittrell was Doniphan's first permanent settler, 1819.

During the early 1900's, Doniphan was the center of a leading railroad tie producing area in the U.S. At the peak, the Missouri Tie and Lumber Co. cut some 35,000,000 feet of logs a year in northwest Ripley County. After 1905, the denuded land was uncared for until made a part of Clark National Forest in the 1930's when it was put under a program of reforestation.

Mounds built by prehistoric Indians have been found in the county, an area utilized in modern times by Osage and by migrating bands of Cherokee and other tribes whose village-camps were built along the Current. The Osage ceded claims to the region, 1808. The Natchitoches Path, noted Indian trail to the Southwest, ran through southeastern Ripley County crossing the Current River at Pitman's Ferry, Ark., some 12 miles south of Doniphan.