GENERAL ACCOUNT OF MISSOURI DEVONIAN. 3 



The Devonian of central Missouri has rarely been mentioned 

 in geological literature and its extent and relationships are 

 known to few people. This is due in part to the inaccessibility 

 of the outcrops. The exposures most easily reached are near 

 Providence and Easley in Boone County, Lupus in Moniteau 

 County, and Sweeney in Cooper County. They are in the bluffs 

 of the Missouri River along the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, 

 and Missouri Pacific railroads in Boone and Moniteau Counties, 

 and along the Missouri, Kansas and Texas at Sweeney, but at 

 the places mentioned the rocks are thin and only sparsely 

 fossiliferous and have attracted little attention. 



Southward and eastward from Providence the Devonian 

 outcrops retreat from the river bluffs and are only rarely within 

 three miles of Missouri River. They occur in very rugged 

 topography that is reached only with difficulty from the towns 

 on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad. Furthermore, all 

 of the towns are small, and the chance of geologists visiting in 

 their vicinity is rare. The Wabash Railroad parallels roughly 

 the Missouri River and the northern margin of Devonian out- 

 crops, but it is in a nearly level country which rarely comes 

 closer than five miles to the Devonian, and the country adjacent 

 to it gives little promise to exploring geologists. 



South of the Missouri River the exposures near Lupus are 

 limited in extent, thin, and sparsely fossiliferous. At Sweeney, 

 about fifteen miles northeast of Sedalia, a good outcrop of 

 Cooper occurs in a large quarry, but the rock is nonfossiliferous, 

 and though Sweeney is well-known as a collecting place for 

 Chouteau fossils its Devonian exposures are little known and 

 have never been mentioned in geologic literature. 



The Central Missouri Devonian outcrops occur from Pettis 

 County on the west to Marion County on the northeast. In 

 Pettis, Cooper, and Moniteau Counties they are patchy and of 

 small extent. In most cases they are in the bluffs of the larger 

 streams and only rarely form the surface rocks over areas even 

 a quarter of a mile in width. (The areas of outcrops shown on 

 the small map (Plate F. a.) are greatly exaggerated.) 



From Boone County through Callaway, Montgomery and 

 western Warren counties the Devonian exposures are almost 

 continuous, but the formations are so thin that they only rarely 

 make up an important part of the valley sides and usually the 

 part taken by them is negligible. In central Callaway County 

 where the main valleys are about one hundred feet deep and the 



