Rockpile Mountain Wilderness is a protected area in Missouri’s Mark Twain National Forest in Madison County, southeast of Bell Mountain and southwest of Fredericktown. Its defining landscape is a broken ridge with steep, rocky slopes extending from Little Grass Mountain south to the national forest boundary four miles away. The wilderness takes its name from an ancient circle of granite rocks atop the mountain, believed to have been an Indian cairn. That feature connects the area’s rugged natural setting with evidence of human presence long before its modern designation as wilderness.

Cherokee Pass, Missouri · USA