Best cave locating tactics?

[STLOUISX50]

My wife and I have heard locals who grew up near Wright City, Missouri say there are a few caves around. That peaked our interest and I started looking up historical news papers, maps as well as topography. We have driven a few roads where we have found a few potential areas for caves, but have not had the best of luck.

I have read the best way to find caves is to talk to locals, but being new to the area , I am not comfortable doing that because I don't want to tip off anyone to the exploration we would like to do. I have heard winter is a good time, as you can see steam rising from the caves, but the issue is the winter driving, so that may or may not be an acceptable way. I thought I understood how to locate possible locations by looking at topography maps, but it's hit or miss for me.

So along with what I have already done. What are some good tips & tricks to finding caves? The area I would be exploring would be Warren Co, Lincoln Co, St. Charles Co primarily.

[Nicotti]

A very tiny probability is to figure out the location by way of the cave map. Get the cave maps for those counties from the dnr. Some times they have topography info that can help you find them. I probably found two caves out of the whole sw mo cave maps cd that way. It's not a great yield by an stretch of the imagination, but it's something.

[mindwaave]

I've used topo and Google Maps to locate close clusters of sinkholes, 1/4 times in one of the sinks we'll find a cave entrance. That's pretty nonspecific, but it's a tactic that's worked for us.

[PANIC! on the Titanic]

Growing up in Lincoln county, I can tell you it's tricky in that part of the state. In general, you'll want to look on topos that predate the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of 1988 because after that, pretty much all known caves were removed from public topo maps. Even before that though, only major caves really show up.

Lincoln county is home to 8 caves that I know of, I've only been to 4 of them, and one was at my neighbor's place and it's flooded. Incidentally, it doesn't show up on any map before a surveyor plot from the late 1800s. After that it's a ghost cave.

Blackhawk cave, located just south of Winfield, is found in 1888 book "History of Lincoln County, Missouri, from the earliest time to the present (a seriously interesting read) is somewhere along Brevator road. Blackhawk spring shows up on some topo maps, so the cave must be nearby. I've never found it though.

The other caves don't have any real telltale signs around then due to the nature of the geology (unlike the ozarks) but look for steep valleys walls, anything named "Cave ____" (e.g. Cave spring, Cave Ridge, Cave Road, etc) and work from there. Also asking old timers you come across might give you a general location of something. Unless you're in a local caving grotto, it's going to be a lot of work. Good luck!

[SubLunar]

I've done much exploring in and around that area and can tell you there's not much as far as caves go. You'll have to widen your search quite a bit.

I can tell you that crazydrummerdude and I have definitively solved the mystery of "Cave Springs" in St Peters, MO. This sort of thing is exactly what I live for. This and big squishy boobs.

See this link for previously obscure historical information* pertaining to, as well as our quest in search of, Cave Springs:

http://sublunarphotography.blogspot.com ... -6-23.html

*Other people, in particular a certain popular Facebook page pertaining to STL History have ripped off from THIS VERY POST without giving any credit to me/us whatsoever, even going so far as to put their own watermark over the image and changing the saturation to make it look like their own. Fucking dingleberries. I personally spent hours of my time to dig through the archives and I paid for the photocopies to bring this information to the internet. Since I'm the one who originally posted some of these images to the internet, it's easy to prove the source. I'd call out the facebook page in particular if I could remember their name and I don't feel like getting on to check because fuck facebook.

[Nicotti]

But facebook has a market place of illicit drugs and hedgehogs now.