November 2010 - Parks & Recreation - 21

OPENINGS

Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park,
Missouri
A flood-devastated park is rebuilt to
showcase geologic wonders

R

arely does a flood disaster enhance a public recreation area. And
Missourians surveying
the 2005 f lood damage
to Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park probably would have doubted that their favorite natural water park was any exception
to that rule. The 8,500-acre state park-
with extensive campgrounds and a popular public swimming area- had been
inundated by billions of gallons of water after the failure of the nearby Taum
Sauk Reservoir. The park was devastated, and conditions were too dangerous to allow for public swimming. After
a four-and-a-half-year restoration and
rebuilding project, however, Johnson's
Shut-Ins State Park reopened last May.
And most visitors would agree that the
geological materials unearthed when
the f lood sliced through eons of rock
added something rich and rare: a new
understanding of this park as a geologic wonder.
A shut-in is an Ozark term for a river
confined to a narrow channel by hard,
erosion-resistant rock. In the Johnson's
Shut-Ins State Park area, the Black River
cascades over and around volcanic rocks
worn smooth over thousands of years. The
potholes, formations, and gorges of the
shut-ins create infinite fun for swimmers.
The newly revealed geologic debris attests to a pattern of volcanic eruptions,
mountain formations, and collapses of entire mountain ranges into underground
holes. The " scour " created from the Taum
Sauk Reservoir flood is about 1.5 miles
long-and that swath of 1.2 to 1.5 billionyear-old igneous and sedimentary rock is
essentially a flood-carved walking path
into the geologic past.

	

And so the restored park now attempts to communicate to visitors the
spectacular natural history of the place.
Design features in the scour include an
interpretive Scour Pavilion with a geologic mosaic map in the floor, interactive panels with specimens for viewing,
a trail to the Scour Overlook with binocular scope, and informative panels to
point visitors to both wildlife and the remarkable geologic structure.
There is much more to the rebuilt
park, however, than the scour trail and
the shut-ins. Program elements include
a visitor center with 3,000 square feet
of exhibit area featuring interactive displays and tangible artifacts, an AV theater, three interpretive pavilions, three
scenic overlooks, a retail area, a courtyard marked by 10-foot-high icon slabs,
three story-telling mosaic stone plazas,
and six miles of trails with interpretive
markers. Sensitive to making a natural

presentation that was compatible with
the park's landscape, Signature Design's interpretive designer Therese
McKee used locally quarried Missouri
red granite and Aux Vases limestone for
her structures whenever possible. And,
from stone-mosaic plazas to interpretive
signs, McKee made sure to integrate natural materials into structures park-wide.
Even seat walls and building facades
were constructed of stone rubble deposited on the site after the disaster.
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources, along with landscape
architect Ron Huffman of MACTEC Engineering and Consulting, McKee of Signature Design, and The Sutton Studios
architects orchestrated the transformation. Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park, once
known mainly as a great swimming hole,
is now a place where the public can go
to learn about more than a billion years
of the earth's history.


Natural materials enhance the park's courtyards and plazas while telling the
geological story of the park.

www.NRPA .ORG

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