TOWERING TREES: BIG OAK TREE STATE PARK IS REGION'S WELL-KEPT SECRET

DORENA -- Big Oak Tree State Park is something of an enigma.

The park, about 15 miles southeast of East Prairie, is known nationally among bird watchers. Yet among Southeast Missourians, its state- and national-champion trees in an 80-acre virgin bottomland hardwood forest and duckweed-covered swamp are relatively unknown.

The park also has a boardwalk and 22-acre lake.

"This is not a very well-known place," said Justin Guiling, a Department of Natural Resources naturalist at the park.

Last month, the park recorded 480 visitors. When the heat and mosquitoes abate, visits peak at about 1,000 a month, Guiling said.

The park contains one of the area's few presettlement forests in the middle of a vast agricultural area. The rich alluvial soils were deposited millions of years ago by the last inland sea. From these soils, the forest, with its canopy averaging 120 feet, grew ... and grew ... and grew.

About 1800, settlers began clearing the swamp chestnuts, cherrybark oaks, cypresses, sycamores and shell bark hickories. But the great earthquake in 1811 halted the clearing and caused the land from Cape Girardeau to Helena, Ark., to sink 10 to 50 feet. The Bootheel forests were now swampland, which provided temporary protection for the trees.

Levees and drainage systems drained the swamps, and by 1930 much of the bottomland forest was gone. Big Oak Tree was created in 1938 to protect what was left.

What remains are 12 state-champion and two national-champion trees, several are more than 130 feet tall. There are green ashes, swamp cottonwoods, American elms, black willows, perismmons, silver maples, bald cypresses and swaths of giant cane.

The park is home to raccoons; opossums; fox squirrels, the largest tree squirrels in the country;, and swamp rabbits, an endangered species in Missouri. Also, the park is home to at least 146 birds, including the pileated woodpecker, the largest woodpecker in the U.S., and the prothonotary warbler.

Right now the heat and mosquitoes are thriving, so come early or late in the day, bring a jug of water -- and most importantly, bring a can of mosquito repellent. Remember, this is "swampeast" Missouri.

If the heat has subsided and you've slapped on a lather of repellent, a short visit here can be enjoyable. Although the 1,007-acre park doesn't allow camping, its circular, manmade lake is stocked with bass, bluegill, catfish and crappie. The park also has playground and picnic facilities.

Inside the interpretive center at the foot of the boardwalk are exhibits chronicling the area's history and pictures and information about the flora and fauna of the park. The featured display contains a section of a huge oak that was cut down in 1954. The 400-year-old tree was 143 feet tall, its branches spread 114 feet and its circumference was 21 feet, 4 inches.

The highlight of the park is the more than half-mile boardwalk, which ends at a wildlife observation deck in the heart of the swamp.

The boardwalk has 10 observation points:

-- Station 1 has a thicket of giant cane, a rare native grass species with a bamboolike stem. The canebreak was the only nesting habitat in Missouri for the Swainson's warbler, but the bird has left the area.

-- At Station 2 is a large mound of soil, called a tip-up mound, that is held up by the roots of a fallen oak. The water-filled soil caused the tree to develop a weak, horizontal root system.

-- Station 3 has a state co-champion bur oak that is 140 feet tall and 17 feet, 7 inches in circumference.

-- Station 4 includes what was once the largest slippery elm in the nation before it died in 1986. The tree with 115 feet tall. Also in the area are pawpaws with sweet, fleshy fruits sometimes called "Missouri bananas."

-- Station 5 features some of the park's ground-cover plants, such as poison ivy and stinging nettle. On the boardwalk you will notice the cotton of cottonwood trees, which gives the walkway a snowy appearance.

-- Station 6 includes a tree called the "bent tree" that is growing almost horizontally. While some believe Indians bent the tree others think a neighboring tree fell on the young, flexible tree, causing it to grow almost horizontally under the weight of the felled tree.

-- Station 7 has the national-champion pumpkin ash and sliver maples, which once were used to make dugout canoes.

-- By Station 8 the park has sunk several feet and is now a swamp. Bald cypresses with swollen trunks rise from the water.

-- Station 9 is called the "graveyard forest." Dead cottonwoods and black willows provide a habitat for woodpeckers, wood duck and owls.

-- Station 10, the wildlife observation deck, is in the middle of what was once a larger swamp created by the 1911 earthquake. Buffalo fish sometimes jump out of the water, and you might spot a slider, which is an aquatic turtle, or a banded water snake, a harmless snake which is often mistaken for a cottonmouth.

Naturalists are at the park 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 to 5 Saturday and Sunday.

While you're in the area, two other sites are worth checking out. Towosahgy State Historic Site is about five miles east of Big Oak Tree, and the Hunter-Dawson Home State Historic Site is about 15 miles west of the park in New Madrid.

The Towosahgy site preserves the remnants of a once-fortified Indian village. The Hunter-Dawson home is an antebellum mansion that captures the lifestyle of the old Bootheel gentry.

The Southeast Missourian will be running Destinations each Tuesday through the summer. The Click and Double Click Internet column appears inside today's newspaper. Learning stories about schools and education will return in September.

Destinations planned:

*Big Springs and National Scenic Riverways

*Sam A. Baker State Park

*New Harmony, Ind.

*Taum Sauk Mountain, Elephant Rocks and Johnson Shut-Ins

*Kimmswick

*Ste. Genevive and Fort De Chartres