Powder Mill Cave Natural Area
A closed cave with an open threshold: a short path from a Highway 106 pull-off leads to the entrance of a nearly nine-mile cave, where a spring branch runs out of the dark and endangered Indiana bats spend the winter.
Get directionsOpen in Google Maps
Almost nine miles of mapped passage run under this Shannon County hillside, and almost nobody will ever see them. Powder Mill Cave is a 100-acre Missouri natural area, designated in 1971 and lying within Rocky Creek Conservation Area, set aside because the cave and its spring branch are highly significant for their biology, their geology, and their fossils (Missouri Department of Conservation).
The cave stays closed, and the closure is the conservation story. Endangered Indiana bats hibernate in it, a grotto salamander found nowhere outside caves lives in its waters, and scientists have recovered Pleistocene bones from inside, including a dire wolf and a Jefferson's ground sloth. What you get instead of entry is the threshold: a short path to the mouth, the sound of the spring branch coming out of the dark, and a look into the entrance that dire wolves used twenty thousand years ago.
It pairs naturally with the Powder Mill Campground stop on the same highway, a short drive south: camp or launch at the river, then drive up to the Powder Mill Creek crossing, park in the pull-off on the north side of Highway 106, and follow the path along the creek to the entrance. There are no facilities here and nothing to buy. It is a brief detour that makes the campground's creek mean something: this is where Powder Mill Creek comes from.
Good to know before you go
- Fees
- No fee is stated by the Missouri Department of Conservation on the Powder Mill Cave page read for this listing, marked unknown.
- Hours and seasons
- No hours and no season are stated by the Missouri Department of Conservation for this natural area. The closure that defines the visit is permanent, not seasonal: the cave itself is closed to public entry year-round to protect its fragile ecology and the endangered Indiana bats that hibernate in it (MDC). The entrance and the spring branch can be visited from the path at any time the pull-off is reachable.
- Parking
- A small gravel pull-off on the north side of Highway 106 where the highway crosses Powder Mill Creek, read by right-click in a Google Maps session (2026-11-09) at 37.193329, -91.169090, about 170 metres east of the cave point; a dirt track leaves the pull-off's western end and a path follows the creek downstream to the cave entrance (Missouri Department of Conservation). The listing pin (37.193158, -91.171013) is the Conservation Department's own published point for the natural area. Note: the Department's directions say to continue a quarter mile past the Powder Mill Campground entrance to the pull-off; the only north-side pull-off found in the map session is this one, at the creek crossing about 1.2 km straight-line north-east of the campground (a longer drive on the highway's bends), and the Department's page also misstates the compass direction from Eminence (the site is east of Eminence, per the Park Service and Google Maps, not west).
- Accessibility
- The Missouri Department of Conservation publishes no accessibility statement for this natural area. The visit is a pull-off and an unpaved path along a creek in a forested hollow; no facilities of any kind are provided at the pull-off or the cave entrance.
- Nearest town
- Eminence, Missouri
- Region
- Southeast Missouri
- Coordinates
- 37.193158, -91.171013
What you can do there
- The cave entrance viewpoint: the public can walk up to the entrance and look in, and hear the spring branch coming out of the cave (Missouri Department of Conservation)
- The spring branch of Powder Mill Cave, running from the cave mouth down Powder Mill Creek toward the Current River (MDC)
- A short path from the Highway 106 pull-off to the cave entrance, following the creek downstream (MDC)