Upriver from Akers Ferry, which connects the wilderness north of the Current River to the wilderness on the south, Welch Spring is home to an abandoned country hospital. Nearly a century ago, a physician built a stone sanitarium at the entrance to Welch Cave, to treat respiratory illnesses with fresh spring water and cool cave air. Long deserted, the hospital is a ruin, and the cave is home to bats, who pay the rent by eating their weight in bugs every day. Welch Spring is a real gusher, and if conditions are right, cold water hits warm air, forming a pea soup fog for a quarter mile downriver.

–from Coastal Missouri, by John Drake Robinson

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