Berryman Trail OHV Area
The Berryman Trail OHV Area is one of the most celebrated off-highway vehicle and mountain bike trail systems in the Mark Twain National Forest, located in the St. Francois Ranger District in Washington County at the heart of Missouri's St. Francois Mountains: the oldest exposed rocks in Missouri, Precambrian granite and rhyolite knobs rising above the surrounding Ozark Plateau in a cluster of rocky, forested hills that geologists call the Missouri Rhineland for the granitic outcrops that give the landscape its European character. The Berryman Trail itself is a 24-mile loop trail originally built for equestrian and foot travel and now designated for OHV use, threading through the St. Francois Mountain terrain between Berryman and Brazil Creek campgrounds on a route that has become a benchmark Ozark trail destination, the granite and rhyolite substrate producing the rocky, rooted trail character that distinguishes St. Francois Mountain riding from the chert and dolomite terrain of the Springfield Plateau to the west. The St. Francois Mountains are geologically ancient and topographically distinct from the rest of the Missouri Ozarks: the Precambrian igneous cores of the mountains are exposed as the resistant summits of Buford Mountain, Taum Sauk Mountain (the highest point in Missouri at 1,772 feet), Proffit Mountain, and the rounded knobs of the Shut-Ins country where the Black River cuts through the igneous rock in the shut-in gorges that define Missouri's most dramatic river scenery. ATVs, UTVs, dirt bikes, and mountain bikes on designated routes; Mark Twain NF permit required. Potosi/Fredericktown Ranger District (573-438-5427) manages trail conditions and the Berryman OHV permit system.