by the Springfield
News-Leader staff
This article originally
appeared in the
Springfield News-Leader
Deep in the oak and hickory woods of central Taney County sits an old
stone house, built in 1924 by Frank Drury.
No longer a residential getaway, the building houses Missouri State’ Bull Shoals
Field Station, a home for weekend researchers wanting to study Ozarks
ecology.
“One of the things that we need to do is let people know that this
station exists, what we are trying to do, and what do we need to do to
develop the station in the future,” said John Havel, Missouri State
University professor and
the field station’s director.
That’s the goal of today’s open house, which begins at 11 a.m. The
public is invited to see what students and others have been doing to turn
the location into a research facility.
So far, a new roof has been put on the building, and a gas-powered
generator helps keep lights on at the house. And several students and
researchers have used the location on the western end of Bull Shoals Lake
to research plants and conduct water-quality studies since it opened in
1999 as a partnership of Missouri State, the state Department of Conservation, and
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Now, Havel and others are trying to raise $250,000 to finish a first-phase
renovation of the facility.
Bull
Shoals Field Station
