Hollow Hills of the Ozark Mountains
The light looks different now. Old man winter’s shadow is stretching long across the rocky clay. As the days shorten, the veil between seasons grows thin and the Ozarks reveal their deeper architecture buried beneath the rolling hills and timber.
The Underground Kingdom
The Ozarks sit atop a giant skeleton, the remnants of an ancient sea. The ancient waters left a thick layer of limestone and dolomite beneath the hills. These rocks are porous, riddled with cracks and joints, and are dissolved easily by acidic groundwater. The fractures in the ground became cavernous tunnels and formations resulting in nearly eight thousand caves in the Missouri Ozarks, with Arkansas being home to about half that number.
The caves have been the subject of many stories and legends throughout Ozarks history. From the Native Americans, the Spanish explorers, French trappers, and Scotch-Irish settlers, they have drawn a peculiar duality of purpose. The Spanish conquistadors used them as burial locations for lost Spanish gold.1 Jesse James and his gang used the extensive cave systems of the Ozarks to evade pursuit.2 Bloody Bill Anderson cached weapons and gold in these limestone vaults.3
A landscape so thoroughly undermined by hidden spaces creates a people comfortable living in close proximity to the hidden and unknown. Traditionally, caves are seen as being places of ingress to the underworld, while mountains were considered where one receives spiritual insight from above. In the Ozarks these dark doors are nestled in the roots of the blessed mountains, a microcosm of the cosmos.4 Perhaps this is why Ozarkers have generally been drawn to the liminal. A simultaneous culture of extreme piety and earthiness.
There is another mystery in caves that have surely impacted the subconscious of the families who have called these hills their homes for generations. The cave represents the tomb and a place of death. They are where you usher your loved ones into the afterlife, yes, but they also are the place from which life emerges.5 The most accessible water comes from springs bubbling up from a hidden cavern below. One must journey within the earth before one can return with the Water of Life.
To Hell & Back Again
As previously mentioned, caves have traditionally been seen as entrances to the underworld. This song is a fairly early ballad that is also known and sung to this day in both Britain and Ireland that feels very much like a traditional fairy tale and maintains a humorous tone despite the grave subject matter. In this rendition by Donnie Koonce, its easy to picture a pitch-fork wielding devil hopping into an Ozark cavern to get down to Hell. Hey, maybe thats where Devil’s Den6 gets its name?
The Farmer’s Curst Wife
Th farmer was plowin' his field one day
Rightful-rightful-tilley-fi-day
Th farmer was plowin' his field one day
Th Devil came up to him he did say
With a rightful-la-tilley-fi-day
Rightful-rightful-tilley-fi-day
Well, he said, my good man, I've come for you wife
He said, my good man, I have come for you wife
She's th main torment of your life
…
So, th Devil he hoisted 'er up on his hump
Th Devil he hoisted her up on his hump
Down to Hell with her he did jump
…
When they got there th gates were shut
When they got there th gates were shut
One sweep of her arm, she broke open his nut
…
Two little Devils were playin' handball
Two little Devils were playin' handball
Said, take 'er out Pa, shell kill us all
…
So, th Devil he hoisted 'er up on his hump
Th Devil he hoisted 'er up on his hump
N' back to earth with her he did jump
…
Well, he said, my good man I've come with your wife
He said, my good man I have brougth back your wife
She's th main torment of my life
…
So they say, it's th women that's worser than th men
They say that, th women is worse than the men
Got sent down to Hell an' kicked out again
…
A Beast of the Underworld
In the deepest pools of the cleanest Ozark streams, where spring water bubbles up from limestone depths and the current runs clear as window glass, dwells North America’s largest salamander. The Ozark hellbender can stretch nearly two feet long, its wrinkled hide the color of creek-bottom stones, its broad head flattened like a shovel blade. This subspecies exists nowhere else on earth.
Where alchemists of old speak of salamanders born from fire, the Ozarks birthed their own elemental guardian of the living water that springs from limestone depths. Both creatures demand purity of their element, both serve as proof against corruption.
These living fossils are severely threatened by the poisoning of our water supply with industrial farming chemicals and the stripping of tree cover around creeks. They are so endangered that they must be raised in captivity7 in hopes of a time when the water supply is clean enough to return them to their homes.
But the hellbender’s plight mirrors something deeper. Being a liminal creature, the hellbender feels a bit like the dwindling Ozarkers of today. As times have changed, so too have authentic Ozark men and women, being influenced by the outside has blighted not only our landscape and wildlife but also the culture of our mountainous home.
Though many hellbenders are gone, those that do remain thrive in clean springs that come from deep below the surface where the pollution of tainted runoff can’t harm them. May we also seek out the source of things and not just rely on the muddied down-stream waters to nourish us.
Local Lexicon
drip-rock: noun. Stone deposited by water, which forms stalactites and stalagmites in Ozark caverns.
P.S. If you made it this far, there is a song that I feel thematically follows the pondering on caves by ‘The Oh Hellos’. It’s worth a listen if you have 4 more minutes.
The Truth is a Cave - The Oh Hello’s
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Across the Ozarks, from Arkansas’s Buffalo River to Missouri’s Current River country, persistent legends tell of Spanish conquistadors who buried treasure before retreating south in the 1540s. De Soto’s expedition, historically documented as passing through Arkansas, likely spawned these tales, though no Spanish gold has ever been authenticated. ↩︎
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Pineville, Missouri, celebrates Jesse James Days each summer, commemorating the outlaw’s documented use of McDonald County’s cave systems. The James-Younger gang cached supplies and hid from federal troops in local caves following bank robberies in Kansas and Missouri. Pineville’s Roaring River Springs and nearby cave networks provided perfect hideouts, multiple exits, and sympathetic local populations who viewed federal authorities as occupying forces. ↩︎
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William T. “Bloody Bill” Anderson led Confederate irregulars in vicious guerrilla warfare across Missouri, 1863-1864. Unlike other Confederate commanders, Anderson specifically targeted civilians, earning his nickname through unprecedented brutality. His men cached weapons and gold in Ozark caves between raids. Anderson was killed near Richmond, Missouri, in October 1864, but legends persist of treasure he buried in cave systems along the Missouri-Arkansas border. ↩︎
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Christ was crucified atop the same mountain where Adam was buried, and the cave-tomb of Christ’s resurrection lay within this same hill. Thus Golgotha becomes both place of death and birth, the mountain that contains within itself the hollow space of new life. This theological understanding sees the cave not as absence but as the necessary darkness that enables resurrection. ↩︎
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“Thy nativity, O Christ our God, has given rise to the light of knowledge in the world.” ↩︎
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A number of organizations, including the Missouri Department of Conservation, are partnering with the Saint Louis Zoo in a captive breeding program for hellbenders, reintroducing them into the wild, with an aim to increasing their numbers in wild populations. ↩︎