Decaturville Crater

The Decaturville crater is a complex meteorite impact structure straddling the Camden-Laclede county line in the Ozarks, about 16 miles north of Lebanon and 15 miles south of Camdenton, Missouri.[1][2] It's a genuinely old feature — dated to less than 300 million years, Permian or younger — and part of the "38th parallel structures," a loose chain of circular features across central North America hypothesized to be remnants of ancient impacts.[1] The crater is roughly 6 kilometers across, expressed on the ground as a ring of low hills about three and a half miles wide, but the most accessible evidence is geological, not topographic: a roadcut along Missouri Route 5 exposes the impact-disturbed rock directly.[1][2] There are no interpretive signs or markers — you're reading the roadcut yourself, not visiting a staffed site.

The crater sits along Missouri Route 5 (also referenced as "Old South 5" in some sources), roughly halfway between Camdenton and Lebanon in Camden County. The clearest exposure is the roadcut itself — park safely off the highway shoulder to examine it; there's no dedicated parking area or trailhead.[1][2]

This is a roadcut/outcrop site — examine and collect loose float from the public road right-of-way rather than hammering the cut face itself, which is both a safety hazard on an active state highway and likely to draw attention from MoDOT. The surrounding hills that make up the rest of the crater structure are private land; the roadcut is the practical public-access point.[1][2]

The roadcut along Route 5 is public highway right-of-way, managed by the Missouri Department of Transportation, and that's the access point this dossier can confirm as public.[1] The broader crater structure — the ring of hills beyond the roadcut — sits on land whose ownership was not verified in this research pass; treat any collecting beyond the immediate road shoulder as requiring landowner permission until confirmed otherwise. There are no formal visitor facilities, signage, or safety infrastructure at this site — use standard highway-shoulder caution.