The first known grist mill along Camden County’s Little Niangua River was burned to the ground by unknown assailants in the middle of the night. It was 1864, and the mill family barely escaped alive. Today, nothing remains of Burnt Mill but a cave from which a vigorous Ozark spring pours into the Little Niangua.

After the Civil War, another invader took over the land. But the eastern red cedar has been removed, kept in check by periodic prescribed fires, and the hilltop glades and river slope woodlands and wildflowers–like this cardinal flower–are thriving.