Arcadia Valley s Annual Fourth of July Fireworks Display krcu.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from krcu.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Arcadia Valley – a region in the St. Francois Mountains that includes the towns of Ironton, Arcadia and Pilot Knob-contains three memorable state parks as well as historic Civil War sites and solid choices for dining, lodging and shopping. Here are some of our favorite activities for a weekend getaway:
1. Elephant Rocks State ParkThe most distinctive feature of this seven-acre park is the massive pink granite boulders that were formed 1.5 billion years ago. They stand end to end like a line of elephants. A self-guiding trail winds among the rocks and also leads to an old quarry, where Missouri red granite was quarried from the 1860s to the early 1900s, and the ruins of a railroad engine house.
From the Battle of Mine Creek by Samuel Reader.
The Battle of Gettysburg may have been the turning point of the Civil War, but no one told the Confederates that, especially in the West.
In August 1864, Confederate Maj. Gen. Sterling Price received an order to take the fight to the North, capture St. Louis and make Abraham Lincoln a one-term president.
The resulting offensive was one of the largest mounted cavalry attacks of the war, and it cost the Confederacy dearly. One Union soldier, a 20-year-old private from Iowa, earned the Medal of Honor for compounding the South s failure.
A cutting from the 1897 book The Story of American Heroism depicts a wounded Dunlavy taking Gen. Marmaduke s weapon, apparently just by virtue of proximity.