Spring River (Missouri)

The Spring River is a 129-mile-long (208 km) waterway located in southwestern Missouri, southeastern Kansas, and northeastern Oklahoma. It begins in northern Barry County, Missouri south of Aurora, flows north of Verona and turns west across Lawrence and Jasper counties, passing through Carthage, before crossing into Cherokee County, Kansas, where it widens considerably. It flows past the east sides of Riverton and Baxter Springs before emptying into the Grand Lake o' the Cherokees in Ottawa County, Oklahoma.

The Spring River takes its name from the many seeps and springs that provide its baseflow. Big Spring in Lawrence County is the largest spring in the Spring River basin, discharging 12.3 million gallons of water per day. The spring flows from the base of a high bluff of Burlington Keokuk limestone known as Baptist Hill, and enters the Spring River about 200 feet away. The river forms the western boundary of the Ozarks in southwest Missouri and southeast Kansas. All of the Ozark area in southeast Kansas is contained within the Spring River basin.

The river was important to Native American tribes and later European-American settlers in Lawrence and Jasper County, especially around Carthage, where it was not yet too wide to dam. Scores of grist and sawmills were established on the river in those counties beginning as early as the 1840s. A dam erected northeast of Carthage in 1875 provided water power to mills and other industry through a mile-long millrace, which fed into an industrial basin on north Main street. The concentration of industry there continues to affect the water quality in the river.

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