We’ll be exploring and revisiting the area around the Weldon Spring containment dome over the course of this year, exploring and finding the remnants of human habitation that were abandoned when the federal government bought out the residents around the plant that would eventually process the uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Here and there, south of Highways 94 and 40, signs of what was once a rural community appear from the late winter underbrush.
We managed to find two cemeteries, which are the most likely feature to survive from the removal of residents in the area, which was made up of a couple small towns and farmland.
The first cemetery, the Yahn, is cloaked in mystery, and when it was bought out, there was only a single grave with a wood marker.
We continued down a footpath which is a former road. If you look closely, there are the imprints of barbed wire that cut into trees as they grew around former property lines.
The Daniels Cemetery is much more substantial with many more graves which also contain stone grave markers.
We often spotted yuccas, which are not native to the state, which helped us find locations of human activity in the second growth forest.
There are two yuccas native to Missouri, just not this region. There is a more significant cemetery buried in the woods at Weldon Spring that are all in German. It’s near a grassy hilltop and there are daffodils growing indicating previous human habitation. Additionally, something I found out recently is that the Hamburg quarry is filled with radioactive waste to this day. It’s fenced in and surrounded by the Lewis and Clark Trail. On the trail map it’s marked as off-limits but no mention of it’s radioactivity.
Interesting! Thanks for the info. Stay tuned for more explorations in the future.