Elephant Rocks

Pink granite boulders the size of houses, standing in a row

A string of enormous Precambrian granite boulders in the Saint Francois Mountains, weathered round and standing end to end like a train of pink circus elephants, which is exactly how the park got its name. The granite here is some of the oldest exposed rock in the middle of the continent. The geologist John Stafford Brown gave the land to the state in 1967, and people come to picnic, climb on it, and walk among stones the size of houses.