Public can view redevelopment plans for Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park

JOHNSON'S SHUT-INS STATE PARK, Mo. -- The curious have just six more weeks to visit Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park before what had been one of the state's most popular recreation areas will be closed for restoration.

The park near Lesterville in southeast Missouri, which was devastated by a torrent of water from a breach in the Taum Sauk Reservoir last December, will close Oct. 2.

The park, which was one of the most beautiful places in the Missouri Ozarks, is not expected to be fully operational until sometime in 2008, Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Sue Holst said.

However, Ameren Corp., which is responsible for the construction, hopes to accelerate redevelopment to allow public access sometime in 2007.

Plans for redeveloping Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park will be presented to the public at open houses this weekend at the park and in St. Louis on Aug. 28.

"We can't ever restore it to the way it looked before," Holst said. "The park is different than before. The trees are gone. There's sand and boulders. The stream is different.

"But we want to provide a similar experience to what was there before."

Reservoir accident

When the Taum Sauk reservoir of Ameren's hydroelectric plant gave way on Dec. 14, it sent more than 1 billion gallons of water down the side of Proffit Mountain that gushed through the park, about 120 miles southwest of St. Louis. It deforested a wide swath on the mountain, leaving a scar of rock that can't be replanted.

It destroyed the park supervisor's house and scattered his family, who all survived. It covered huge tracts of the park in thick silt and clay, leveled a forest of trees, and turned the river into a chocolatey bath.

The 1.3 billion-year-old blue-gray rhyolite rocks, over which the Black River flowed noisily, forming pools, cascades and waterfalls, were largely undamaged.

The Department of Natural Resources' redevelopment plan, which incorporates public comment from April, addresses access to the park, camping, picnicking, visitor services; park interpretation; and overcrowding, which had limited visitor use to 100 cars at a time, Holst said.

The camping and day use sites used to be heavily wooded. Some tree planting has begun.

The reservoir break left a "scar channel" on the side of the mountain and littered the park with boulders, which are now part of a temporary, guided, visitor footpath. How those post-disaster features should be interpreted remains a question, Holst said.

Work will begin later this month to restore the section of the sludge-filled Black River from the scar channel to the shut-ins to its natural flow.

Cleaning the shut-ins of sand and rebar deposited by the torrent will take a separate plan.

Even in the devastation, though, new life is emerging.

Park naturalist Janet Price said killdeer -- a bird rarely seen in the park before -- are laying eggs on the boulders and gravel where their colors blend in.

She found acorns that had washed down the mountain had sprouted in the bare gravel.

The park's unique fens, a type of wetlands with a high variety of plant species, were scoured or, in some cases, totally covered by silt.

But in other places, the trees held and slowed the force of the water, mitigating damage. Over the winter, crews did painstaking, manual cleanup, but the fens' long-term prognosis is uncertain.

Price has seen orchids, phlox and other wetland plants, as well as salamanders and spring peepers, a type of frog.

"We can't say it's going to recover like it was, but we're always hopeful," she said.

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On the Net:

Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park: http://www.mostateparks.com/jshutins.htm

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IN REVIEW

WHAT: The Department of Natural Resources is holding open houses to present redevelopment plans for Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park in late August.

DETAILS: They are scheduled for noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the state park, and from 4 to 8 p.m. Monday at the St. Louis County Library, Oak Bend Branch, 842 S. Holmes Ave. The plan also will be posted at the park store through Sept. 10.

ONLINE: The plan also will be available online at www.mostateparks.com/jshutins/recovery.htm from Monday through Sept. 10.

PARK SCHEDULE: The park is open for visitors from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week through Oct. 1. It will close Oct. 2 so redevelopment can begin. It's expected to be fully operational in 2008.