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Convoy!

Cause we got a little ol’ convoy rockin’ through the night.  
Yeah, we got a little ol’ convoy, ain’t she a 
beautiful sight? 
 
From Convoy, sung by CW McCall, 1975
 
If you remember this song, you might also remember Rubber Duck talking about rolling up on Interstate 44 “like a rocket sled on wheels”. Today, as we follow old Route 66 across Missouri, we travel along Interstate 44. Maybe we will see one of those convoys.
 
Route 66 originally was a gravel road that followed a much older trail through Missouri – the Great Osage Trail. Before the Civil War, the trail was known as the St Louis to Springfield Road.
 
During the Civil War, a telegraph line was strung along its length and it became known locally as the Wire Road. That moniker lasted until 1926 when, at Springfield, Missouri, officials first named that section of road, as well as the rest of the Chicago to  Los Angeles highway, US Route 66.
 
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Our previous stop (last month) was at an underground storage facility created in a limestone mine. About an hour west of St Louis, and a couple of miles off I-44, we will visit another underground limestone “mine”. But this time, Mother Nature was the miner.
 
The “mine” began forming in limestone bedrock about 400 million years ago. Rainwater combined with carbon dioxide given off by decaying vegetation formed carbonic acid that percolated through fractures in the limestone. In doing so, it dissolved the rock, creating solution-enlarged openings.
 
Over geologic time, these openings enlarged, forming caverns with ceilings and floors liberally bejewelled with stalactites, stalagmites, rimstone dams and draperies. Iron and manganese impurities and tannic acids stained the otherwise snowy white features with shades of red, orange, brown, grey and black. That geologic process is responsible for the thousands of caves and springs that form a part of southern Missouri’s natural beauty.
 
One such cave system is known as Meramec Caverns. In 1935, Lester Dill opened the caverns as a tourist attraction, possibly making it the oldest tourist stop along Route 66.
 
My college roommate and I visited the caverns during the summer of ’65. When we returned to his Triumph TR4, someone had slapped a bumper sticker on it. It turns out that Dill also pioneered the use of bumper stickers. 
 
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The adhesive used to attach stickers to cars had not yet been developed, so Dill would have “bumper sign boys” tie Meramec Caverns signs on the cave visitors’ cars, giving the visitors a free souvenir and Dill free advertising.
 
As we head west back on I-44, we don’t want to miss Hooker Cut. We take exit 169 and turn west on County Highway Z, a back road that at one time was the most modern part of Route 66.
 
In 1940, the US Army broke ground for Fort Leonard Wood. Two years later a new four-lane stretch of Route 66 was excavated through Hooker Hill in order to move equipment more efficiently to and from the Fort. It is said the new road saved a full day’s travel for oversized loads of military equipment.
 
It was a magnificent engineering feat. At 28 metres, Hooker Cut was, at the time, the deepest earth cut ever attempted in Missouri and was believed to be the deepest road cut in the US. 
 
We push on down I-44 and stop at Joplin, near the western boarder of Missouri. During dinner the locals regale us with stories about the record-breaking 234-truck Special Olympics truck convoy held in Joplin in September, 2013. Now that would give CW McCall something to sing about.
 
CONVOY! 
 
Bill Langer is a consultant geologist, formerly of the US Geological Survey. 
Email bill_langer@hotmail.com or visit 
www.researchgeologist.com

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