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Ringling Brothers?

Elephant Rocks State Park, Missouri

Nestled in the eastern edge of the Ozark Plateau, Elephant Rocks State Park has some impressive geologic features.  My friend Briggs Evans and I are standing on some of the largest pachyderms in the state.  This Missouri granite wonder is the product of 1.5 billion years of geologic process.  The park's name is derived from the rocks standing end-to-end, queued like a train of circus elephants holding tails with trunks.  The largest of the elephant rocks is Dumbo, which weighs in at 680 tons.

Missouri's State Park web site describes the creation of the features as "hot magma [that] cooled forming coarsely crystalline red granite, which later weathered into huge, rounded boulders."  The red granite has been quarried for years.  St. Louis has been the beneficiary of this fine building material, used in the facades of buildings and paving material on downtown streets.

"Missouri Red" granite, as it is called, is mostly used in monuments and headstones today.  I believe the cut and polished granite makes up a big portion of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt National Monument in Washington, D.C.  It forever memorializes this great president's most popular quotes, like "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."