For first time in 15 years, Tower Rock is accessible by foot

ALTENBURG, Mo.

he trip from anywhere to Tower Rock is over two-lane Perry County roads with hairpin turns and hair-raisingly narrow bridges. The last mile is across a gravel-covered, muddy stretch called County Road 460, blocked in spots on Tuesday by road graders and dump trucks.

But at the end is significant history and eye-popping natural beauty rolled into one -- one gigantic piece of limestone topped with cedar trees and scrub brush.

Tower Rock juts up 90 feet out of the middle of the Mississippi River. It sits about three miles east of Altenburg, 28 miles north of Cape Girardeau, closest to a defunct town called Wittenberg.

And for only the second time in 15 years, a person can walk to it on dry land from the Missouri side.

Hundreds did so over the weekend after a St. Louis television station aired a piece on the unusual opportunity. Perry County Commissioner Dennis Lohmann said the county was forced to haul in more gravel after the busy two days.

"Only just a few people live back there, but we still had to put the gravel down," he said. "Sure, it's an extra expense, but we do it gladly for the people who want to see Tower Rock."

Ted Wilson, a retired towboat pilot who bought his house on County Road 460 in 1993, watched in awe as a gridlock formed outside his front window Sunday. City folk approached the Tower Rock Nature Area only to discover it consists of about six unmarked, dirt parking spaces hemmed in by railroad tracks. That's all.

"If I had to guess, I'd say 1,000 people came in and looked at it," he said. "They had cops out here trying to get them moving."

The same thing happened in 1988, the last time the river dropped enough to allow a walk to the rock.

The Mississippi River stage at nearby Grand Tower, Ill., was at 4.41 feet on Tuesday. The National Weather Service didn't have a flood stage available for Grand Tower, but by comparison, Cape Girardeau's flood stage is 32 feet, and the river was at 4.79 feet there Tuesday.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blames a dry autumn and below-normal temperatures in the upper river basin for the low water, which caused corps officials to shut down barge traffic near Cape Girardeau late last week. None of the river was closed Tuesday, and the water near Tower Rock is expected to rise over the next few days.

Corps officials aren't sure when the path to Tower Rock will be covered. In the meantime, tourists continue to trickle in.

Dave Boyher of House Springs, Mo., said he'd heard about the site for years but never made the trip. The timing of a vacation from his job as an Anheuser-Busch brewer and the low river was perfect.

"It was kind of like using steps, climbing it," he said. "There's a rope hanging down on the other side. I can say I've been to the top of that now."

Frank Cramer of Pontoon Beach, Ill., decided to enjoy the view from a safer perch while his daughter made the climb.

"I guess, if you're in good shape and are so inclined, you can climb up there," he said. "But I'll only go if you get a helicopter. Then I'll go up with you."

The low river holds interest for historians as well as climbers. Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet saw it in 1673 and were warned by Indians that demons lived between the rock and shore, an idea probably spawned by the howling winds and rough current in the narrows.

A quarrying operation to make the river easier to navigate nearly blasted Tower Rock into oblivion in the mid-1800s, but a local outcry saved it.

The recent low water has uncovered another historically significant find: a sunken, 1880s-era flatboat about 600 yards south of Tower Rock on the Missouri side and only accessible by boat or through private property. Dr. Frank Nickell, who directs the Center for Regional History at Southeast Missouri State University, studied and photographed the find over the weekend.

He said flatboats such as this one -- wooden versions of today's barges -- measured 40-by-20 feet, were held together by square nails and wooden pegs and probably carried rocks or gravel.

"Few of those survived," he said. "They were used for a number of years and then sold for the lumber."

Nickell said he plans to tell the Army Corps of Engineers and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources about his find and let those agencies preserve the flatboat, which they'll likely do by dumping rocks on and around it.

"If you take it out, you destroy it, if you leave it there, it will be moved by future floods," he explained. "This way, we'll know where to find it."

hhall@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 121