Mountain Biking 10 miles inside "Lost Valley" in Missouri

An amazing 2^nd day of summer in MO….76 deg.  Breezy, bright and sunny. Mountain biked into this hidden gem called Lost Valley outside the suburbs of St. Louis. German settlers built 3 towns out here until 1940. Then the US government took the land and built a sprawling weapons plant which is now gone.

 Nothing is left of either, but one can find misplaced remnants of the original town. They are pieces of civilization left behind like this lone utility pole couched between crowded trees or isolated beds of farmland in the middle of the deep woods which, strangely, somebody still cultivates regularly.   An 18 mile mountain bike trail traverses through this isolated valley.

 This small swampy pond  provides the variations of wildlife activity throughout the seasons….snakes and rodents scurry in the summer, large deer bucks wading in the fall when they, rub their antlers on the dead tree stumps….fawns and yearlings in the summer. All seasons one can always can see a hawk or an occasional owl hunting from the tree tops.

                                 

Pacified Man Made Disaster

Quietly resting at the crossroads of those extinct towns of “Lost Valley” is this obelisk-like mountain.  Perfectly symmetric in its carefully engineered construction, it quietly towers above a vast rural landscape with little fanfare.  A small metal building housing an “interpretation center” tells the sordid story of ofvwhat happened here.   The mountain is a huge man-made structure constructed as part of our government’s “Superfund” program.  Apparently, under it, lies tons of equipment, contaminated soil, buildings and whatever hazardous material was scooped up from decades of hazardous weapons manufacturing.  Adorned with stairs and an observation platform, you can walk up to its top. From the top, I can see more of the surrounding area than I can anywhere else in this mostly flat middle-American locale.  Cool.

 I was assured by a guide at the interpretation center that due to the shielding material in the mountain,  I would absorb less radiation on top of the structure than I would on natural ground. My more compliant half assumes they know, or knew, what they are/were doing.  But, the cynical engineer in me questions that after observing little radiation monitoring devices placed throughout the site.  Either way, I spend as little time near it as my curiousity will allow.

I’m almost waiting to ride over an abandoned ICBM silo on my next ride.  I’ll let you know……