INTERPRETIVE DRIVE

Location:  Shannon County.  About 25 miles south of Salem and just south of Round Spring where a sign directs visitors to a small parking area.  Area information is available on site. 

The length of the drive is 2 miles.  The entire drive is located along a well-maintained Shannon County gravel road.  There are no stream crossings and the drive is easily passable for any passenger car.  You can guide yourself through our forest and learn how this truly sustainable forest management system has been used here in the Ozarks for nearly 50 years. 

This educational drive explains Pioneer Forest's management, our forest research, and our use of single-tree selection harvests to retain the highest quality trees within the forest.  Features of the drive are stops where you see firsthand where this forest management has been applied and how it works to keep a permanent forest on the landscape, a forest inventory site (this is our 45-year research project), windstorm damage, a look at forest structure, and landscape-level forest management. 

Also part of this site is Missouri's Virgin Pine Walk, a short walk through a forest of native shortleaf pine trees whose age has been recorded at more than 200 years.