Collecting petrified wood in Missouri?

Greetings

Does anyone know of public locations to collect petrified wood in Missouri? I've found small pieces at the gravel bar at the Chain of Rocks on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, just south of the I-270 bridge from Missouri, and have been told that they likely originate in North Dakota and have been transported by the Missouri River. As I live in St. Louis, North Dakota is a bit far for a day trip, but if there are any locations in Missouri where it is found natively, or places along the Missouri River that it accumulates, I would appreciate learning of them.

Thanks,

Charles

Charles,
I live in Columbia and walk the surrounding creeks often looking for artifacts, fossils, petrified wood, etc. You can find it in many of these creeks. I have found it mostly in Hinkson creek. The fossilized wood we find here is left from the Pennsylvanian era and this is about as far east as it can be found because the strata layer it occupies dives deep below the surface from here east and in Texas the layer is several hundred feet down. The thing I like the most about it is that this wood lived 300 million years ago, while the fossil wood from the petrified forest is only 100million years old, amazing! I have several pieces of it and have seen some too large to carry home! Jim Angell

My wife found a piece during a float trip in Southwest Missouri, but I look around a lot so I think it was a lucky find. The guy near Columbia seemed to have a better location.

Just reviewed my own email, oops! I should have said Columbia is about as far WEST as you can find "wood" from the Pennsylvanian era, not east. The layer dives deeper toward the west, past the Missippi... Sorry, Jim Angell

So Jim, if I understand the geology from what you said, the wood I'm finding in gravel neat the Missouri River confluence, is eroded in place to the Pennsylvanian and not carried down river from way out west. And this is about the edge before the layer is buried deep. Gary

Gary, Yes, that's the way I understand it, at least the specimans I find are always around coal deposits, I suppose it's possible that there could be some fossilized wood "carried" in by the river but because of the distance, I doubt it... Jim

I live outside a the little town of Calhoun Mo roughly 1 1/2 hours southwest of Columbia and have found 1 small piece in the 4 years Ive been here, my family has lived on the farm though for 60 years and have heard none of my uncles or dad talk about it although they swam in the creeks and roamed the property as kids

I live in Green Ridge Mo.I have found petrifiedwood at my moms farm all my life alsowhen younger found what looked like petrified cactuswood we would number each peice with tape take back to house and put a 15 foot tree back together piece for piece.

Charles,
You don't mention the size of the pieces you found at Chain of Rocks. Small pieces up to 3-4 inches can be carried great distances, especially during the glacial epochs when the rivers flowed much more than now. Here is Texas you can find small pieces of petrified wood hundreds of miles from their source, and in the case of the Rio Grande River gravels, much more than that. Most trees as we know them didn't make their appearance until the Mesozoic Era, and came into their own in the age of mammals, starting 60mya. Most "trees" found in the Pennsylvanian sediments are actually ferns that grew to tree size. Missouri, where I went to college as a geologist, has a lot of Paleozoic rocks exposed at the surface, particularly around St. Louis.

Also, the way most petrified wood is formed, by being buried in muds rich in volcanic ash (like in Texas), or being buried by volcanic eruptions of ash eliminates most formations older than the Cretaceous from consideration. The majority of extrusive volcanic activity occurred and is still occurring as a result of continental drift and the accretion of ocean sediments to the North America continent in the western part of the country. Think Rockies and Cascades. This started in the Cretaceous and is still occurring today (Mt. St Helens).

Hard, silicified pieces of petrified wood can survive long transport and it wouldn't surprise me that what you found came from the headwaters of the Missouri in the Rocky Mountains.