Bluebells of Missouri: Swimming Deer Trail in St. Francois State Park

Missouri has one of the most breathtaking displays of bluebells I’ve ever seen. Once again, I found myself surprised of the beauty found “in my backyard.” Every spring, the Swimming Deer Trail in St. Francois State Park is flooded with with an endless sea of bluebells and other wildflowers. It is must see for anybody in the area during the spring bloom.

Bluebells are easy to distinguish from other flowers. Obviously they are blue, but the shape is atypical of many other flowers. Instead of being a fully opened flower trying to catch as much sun as possible, bluebells hang downwardly towards the ground with their petals enclosed actually making the shape of a bell. Fun fact: over half of the world’s bluebells are actually found in the United Kingdom, so any other bluebells in the world are considered rare!

On the Swimming Deer Trail in St. Francois State Park, they are anything but rare! They are everywhere!! I’d seen pictures people from others, but it’s easy to take pictures of a bunch of flowers and give the impression that they are more than they really are. However, pictures didn’t lie. As I already mentioned, I was amazed by the beauty of the carpet of flowers.

The Swimming Deer Trail is a fairly easy trail that not only offer you a walk through a blue carpeted forest in the spring, but also views of the river. The trail is a little over 3 miles long, but one doesn’t have to hike in very far to see the flowers.

The loop trail is nicely marked and fairly easy to hike. There are some downed trees and a few places that the rocks can make the trek a little difficult. But don’t let that keep you from doing the full trail.

Today we went clockwise where the trail split to save the views of the river for last. But if you don’t plan on doing the full trail, I’d recommend going counterclockwise so that you can see all the trail offers in a shorter distance.

Besides the river views and the magnificent bluebells, don’t miss the little spur trail that takes you down closer to the river where you will find some of the largest sycamore trees in the state. I believe the largest may date back to pre-Civil times. This area can be found by going counterclockwise and looking for the small trail off to the right. You can’t miss the trees!!

There are several other trails in the park to explore, but we felt like the Swimming Deer Trail in the spring deserved its own post. It’s definitely a bucket list item.

I will just let the rest of our pictures speak for themselves: