Dirt Bikes, Mountain Bikes, and More

From the motocross course to the mountain bike trails to the swimming beach to the campgrounds, there’s a little something for everyone at Finger Lakes State Park. Once a coal mine, it’s now one of Boone County’s most popular spots for recreation.

No doubt there are visitors to Finger Lakes State Park who do not recognize this area, just north of Columbia, as a man-made landscape. A half-century has passed since the Peabody Coal Company shovels ripped up the northern Boone County soil and rock to reach the coal below. Since then, there has been some recovery, both from natural seeding and from human-assisted replanting. Still, the rugged terrain—steep ridges and deep ravines, many of which are water-filled—is the telltale aftermath of a resource extraction process known simply as strip mining. 

Coal has always been one of Missouri’s most abundant fuels, and coal mining has been an important industry here, even though it is also followed by controversy. The state ranks among the top ten in quantity of coal reserves. Coal deposits lie under most of northern and western Missouri, although these coal beds are not as massive or of as high quality as those found in some states to the east and west. The coal is found in seams interbedded with shales, sandstones, and limestones dating back in time to the Pennsylvanian period, when large, salamander-like amphibians and early reptiles were the dominant land creatures.

In just a little more than three years, beginning in 1964, the Peabody Company removed some 1.2 million tons of coal from its Mark Twain Mine. The mine tapped into one of Missouri’s major coal fields—one that stretches from western Callaway County northwest across Boone, Howard, Randolph, and Macon counties. After ceasing mining, Peabody undertook some initial reclamation, planting the barren piles of waste and stocking some water-filled pits as fishing lakes. 

In the early 1970s, the U.S. Department of the Interior initiated a program to recycle strip-mine areas as “reclamation for recreation” demonstration projects. The State Park Board surveyed potential sites and identified the Mark Twain Mine as a good candidate. During the negotiation and planning period that ensued, the Peabody Company agreed in 1973 to donate about one thousand acres to the state of Missouri, a donation that was matched with funds for development provided by the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund. Plans for the new park sought to complement decisions that had already been made for Rock Bridge Memorial State Park south of Columbia, which emphasized types of recreation compatible with its outstanding natural and geologic features. At Finger Lakes, by contrast, the emphasis would be on reconfiguring the topography and reclaiming the mined lands for off-road motorcycling and water recreation.

Finger Lakes will never be a natural area like nearby Rock Bridge, but it is a real success as a recreation area. Peabody Lake, one of the larger lakes, was developed with a sand swimming beach and a changing house. For several decades, it was the most popular swimming hole in the Columbia area until the city developed its own swimming beaches on lakes in town. Several of the finger-shaped pits in the eastern half of the park were connected to form a canoe trail nearly five miles long where the fishing is good and visitors have a chance of spotting great blue herons, beavers, raccoons, or deer; there is a boat launch area and the park now rents canoes and kayaks. A pleasant tree-shaded campground has been developed at the north end of the park. 

But the real measure of the park’s popularity lies in its use for off road vehicles (ORVs): four-wheel vehicles with handlebars also known as all-terrain-vehicles (ATVs) and motorcycles of the dirt-bike variety. There is a five-mile designated, marked, and maintained trail from the campground to the motocross track, the staging area, and south to the park office, but ORV users have pioneered some seventy miles of challenging routes across the steep hills and ravines of the strip-mined spoil area.

The motocross track, developed by professional riders and state park planners, is close to Highway 63 in the western part of the park. This area hosts special events each year, co-sponsored by the park and a volunteer motocross parents group. The event draws both professional and amateur riders from across the country. In many places and to many people, ORVs in parks are quite controversial. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that this lively sport has found a home in a park born of controversy over strip mining. Here, motorcycle and ATV enthusiasts can enjoy a challenging landscape without harming some fragile, natural setting, leaving other more natural parks like Rock Bridge less pressured as a result.

The trees at Finger Lakes have grown over the years, and some wildflowers have taken root. The park has come to look more natural—too natural to suit the avid dirt bikers and ATV riders, who worry that it will be taken over by nonmotorized recreationists. The Department of Natural Resources listed the Kelley Branch as an impaired stream in 1998 under terms of the Clean Water Act and Missouri water quality standards, due to excessive sedimentation. As a result, a ninety-acre area of wooded hills buffering the creek was encircled by guardrails and closed to ATVs and off-road motorcycles; the area had been a favorite for riders who loved to cross, recross, and ride in the creek.

Over a period of years, the eroded areas and vegetative cover were restored, and a three-mile loop hiking and mountain-biking trail with just a single crossing of Kelley Branch was built by park staff and State Park Youth Corps workers with help from a local mountain-biking club. Still, most of the 1,130-acre park remains open to ORV use. 

Lying on the sandy beach after a swim, a visitor realizes, almost subconsciously, that the background music one hears is the whining drone of the small-engined dirt bikes, modulating in pitch as they alternately climb and descend the hilly motocross track a few ridges away. One can’t help but compare them mentally with the giant shovels that roamed this landscape a half century ago, the roar of their great diesel engines reverberating as they lifted dirt and rock and scooped the rich black coal into waiting trucks. 

FINGER LAKES STATE PARK • 1505 PEABODY ROAD, COLUMBIA