My Corner Online
Cliff Cave County Park
Cliff Cave Park is a park in St. Louis County located along the Mississippi River between Arnold and Oakville. It's address is 806 Cliff Cave Rd., St. Louis, Missouri. There are a lot of videos on YouTube about this cave. I'll share a few for your convenience. Link 1, Link 2
Six people including children died in Cliff Cave Park in 1993 when a group from St. Joseph's Home for Boys, 12 boys and 4 counselors were there and flash flooding ran through the cave. Seven were trapped in the cave, but only one was rescued alive. The boy survived up on a shelf in the cave for 18 hours. Link 3, Link 4
The cave is not hard to find. We asked some folks walking and everyone was kind to help. The first parking lot you arrive at is the Upper Trail Parking Lot. Continue on down to the end of the road and park at the Lower Trail Parking Lot. You can see us take the walk in the above video. Follow the trail towards the railroad tracks, across the road, and then follow along side the road to where it curves and begins to go over a bridge. The bridge overlooks the cave. Walk around the edge of the end of the bridge and follow the short trail to the cave.
We want to come back with our bikes! There are a lot of great paved trails here at Cliff Cave Park.
This park is also part of the Mississippi Greenway. You can see this section of it at the bottom of the above screenshot map. I think the intention is to eventually connect all of the greenways. From their website, "Great Rivers Greenway is working to make the St. Louis Region a more vibrant place to live, work and play by developing a network of greenways to explore and enjoy. With more than 128 miles of greenways constructed, there is probably one near you, making it easy to live more of your life outside!"
This is the overlook of the Mississippi River from the lower parking lot. I saw a trail that said 1 mile to an overlook from the upper parking lot.
Goldenrod, I believe! There is also some cool black seeds next to it.
This is the trail that follows the vehicle road.
The Spirit of Cliff Cave: During cold winter days, caves - like this one- occasionally "breathe" a cool mist into the open air. Some Native American people consider this to be the breath of a Wakon or Osage spirit.
Where you see the bike in this photo is where you walk around the fence to walk the trail to the cave.
There was a nice sound of trickling water that I could hear from the bridge, but I found it was not a heavy flow. The sound must have echoed.
