The Ancient Road Found Beneath the Ozark Mountains in 1908 —The Osage Said They Closed It From Above

In November 1908, a lead and zinc mining crew driving a drainage adit 220 feet beneath the Ozark Plateau in Newton County, Missouri, broke through a wall of chert into a vaulted subterranean passage. Running due west through solid rock was a paved road 18 feet wide, constructed of fitted basalt blocks and worn smooth along two parallel center grooves. While state geological reports attributed the passage to natural cave stream erosion, Osage oral accounts recorded that their ancestors had sealed the surface access shafts generations earlier to prevent what traveled the lower road from reaching the sun.