In the 1790s, North Carolina frontiersman John Weldon settled this area under a 425-acre Spanish land grant and built a log home on high ground overlooking a spring that later gave Weldon Spring its name. During World War II, the federal government acquired 17,000 acres here and built the world's largest TNT and ONT manufacturing facility to support the U.S. Army's war effort. In 1948, all of the property except the munitions plant was given to the University of Missouri for an agricultural and forestry experiment station, and in 1978 the Missouri Department of Conservation bought part of that land to create a conservation area that now includes two tracts totaling more than 8,300 acres. The Katy Trail passes through the area and parallels the Missouri River for 5.3 miles, while the river borders its entire southern edge. The conservation area is rich in natural resources and includes the 385-acre Weldon Spring Hollow Natural Area, with dry mesic uplands, bottomland forests, rugged river breaks, limestone cliffs, and bluff escarpments resembling the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri. Its steep, rocky forested hills are dominated by oak and hickory and support wildflowers such as Bloodroot, Dutchman's Breeches, Spring Beauty, Dog-tooth Violet, Wake Robin, Jack on the Pulpit, Adam and Eve Orchid, and Lead Plant. The area also supports varied wildlife including White-tailed Deer, wild turkey, raccoon, Fox Squirrel, Three-toed Box Turtles, Ornate Box Turtles, migratory songbirds such as the Acadian Flycatcher, Red-eyed Vireo, Worm-eating Warbler, Wood Thrush, and Ovenbird, and wetland species including Wood Ducks, Great Blue Heron, Red-eared Slider Turtles, Northern Water Snakes, Long-nose Gar, and Mosquitofish. At the base of the river bluff, a large wetland receives clean, treated water from Duckett Creek Sanitary Plant year-round and is also recharged by river flooding, which brings water, nutrients, and fish into the wetland; beaver further alter water levels by building dams. As a wetland ecosystem, this low-lying shallow-water area helps cleanse polluted water, reduce flooding, protect shorelines from erosion, recharge groundwater aquifers, provide wildlife habitat, and support recreation such as wildlife viewing, boating, hunting, and fishing.
