News Release No. 397

MORRIS STATE PARK WILL BE DEDICATED OCT. 8

Volume 33-397

Contact: Sue Holst

(For immediate release)

573-751-6510

JEFFERSON CITY, MO, SEPT. 26, 2005 -- The Missouri Department of Natural Resources will dedicate a new state park that preserves a unique area in Missouri's Bootheel on Saturday, Oct. 8. The ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. at Morris State Park, which is located near Campbell.

The featured guest at the ceremony will be Jim D. Morris of Springfield, who donated the 161-acre park to the department. Other speakers will include Doyle Childers, Department of Natural Resources director. State and local dignitaries have been invited to attend the ceremony. Doug Eiken, director of the department's Division of State Parks, will be the master of ceremonies.

Morris State Park is located in an area of southeast Missouri known as Crowley's Ridge, a unique geologic formation of low hills in the Mississippi River floodplain. Crowley's Ridge has a distinct natural history unique for Missouri. The park preserves a section of this landscape and offers visitors an opportunity to experience it.

A two-mile loop hiking trail named Beech Tree Trail offers a glimpse of the park and the forests of Crowley's Ridge, including beech, red buckeye, southern red oak and sweet gum trees along with the prickly but colorfully flowered devil's walking stick. Interpreters will lead hikes on the day of the dedication; a self-guiding trail brochure that corresponds with numbered stations along the trail provides information as well. The park also contains an overlook and exhibits that interpret the area's natural and cultural significance.

Development at the park was made possible by the one-tenth-of-one percent parks-and soils sales tax, which was approved by Missouri voters.

The day-use park is open from dawn to dusk and is located five miles north of Campbell on Route WW in Dunklin County. For more information about the park, contact Hunter-Dawson State Historic Site at 573-748-5340 or the Department of Natural Resources toll free at 800-334-6946 (voice) or 800-379-2419 (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf). Information on state parks and historic sites is available at www.mostateparks.com.

For news releases on the Web, visit www.dnr.mo.gov/newsrel. For a complete listing of the department's upcoming meetings, hearings and events, visit the department's online calendar at www.dnr.mo.gov/calendar/parkssearch.do.

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