The Meramec River is one of the longest free-flowing waterways in Missouri, draining 3,980 square miles (10,300 km2) while wandering 218 miles (351 km) through six Missouri Ozark Highland counties: Dent, Phelps, Crawford, Franklin, Jefferson, and St. Louis, before it empties into the Mississippi River at Arnold and Oakville, Missouri. Between its source and its mouth, it falls 1,025 feet (312 m). The Meramec watershed covers portions of eight additional counties—Maries, Gasconade, Iron, Washington, Reynolds, St. Francois, Ste. Genevieve, and Texas—totaling approximately 3,980 square miles (10,300 km2). Year-round navigability begins above Meramec Spring, just south of St. James. The Meramec's size increases at the confluence of the Dry Fork, and its navigability continues until the river enters the Mississippi at Arnold, Missouri.
Read more about Meramec River: History, Ecology, Meramec Basin Project
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“It is from quiet places like this all over the world that the forces accumulate which presently will overbear any attempt to accomplish evil on a large scale. Like the rivulets gathering into the river, and the river into the seas, there come from communities like this streams that fertilize the consciences of men, and it is the conscience of the world that we are trying to place upon the throne which others would usurp.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)