Why is the ozark plateau important

The Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Northwest Arkansas boasts a research library and six historic buildings in addition to its various exhibits that focus on the everyday men, women, and children who lived in the towns and rural areas of the Ozarks.

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What Is the Antique Festival of the Ozarks? Blog Gift Certificates Check Availability. Experience the Beauty of the Ozarks Eureka Springs is a wonderful place to experience the natural beauty of the Ozarks. Surface rocks are older than those exposed in surrounding areas. For example, the granites in the Elephant Rocks in the Saint Francois Mountains are believed to be more than a billion years old.

Great relief and steep slopes are typical of the rugged knobs in the Saint Francois Mountains in eastern Missouri, the flat-topped summits and steep valleys in the Boston Mountains of Arkansas, and the rugged, dissected terrain in the White River Hills, Osage-Gasconade Hills and Courtois Hills. The region is heavily mantled with oak-hickory-pine forests and cedar glades. The Ozark Plateau is distinguished from the Ouachitas by a less disturbed rock strata and a profusion of limestone and dolomite.

Chert flint is in great abundance. The resistant chert, when weathered from the dolomite in which it is embedded, accumulates at the surface and must be cleared from fields. Stream beds are choked with chert gravel washed from steep hillsides. The Ozark region is known for its great abundance of karstic landforms springs, caves, sinks, etc. There are hundreds of caves and caverns, some of them quite large. These unusual features are formed by the solution of the limestones and dolomites as the groundwater percolates through them.

The region also possesses exceptional water resources in the form of man-made reservoirs, including large lakes such as Lake of the Ozarks, Lake of the Cherokees, Table Rock Lake, and Greers Ferry Lake.

The Ozark region and its borders boast 18 reservoirs covering more than , acres, with a combined shoreline of 7, miles. Some fast flowing rivers, including the Current, Jacks Fork, and Buffalo, have been designated protected scenic rivers. More than fifty streams provide fast clear waters for canoeing and float fishing. The bedrock is domed upward elliptically, being highest along the central line running from a point near Ste.

Genevieve, beside the Mississippi River, to the Missouri state line near the southwestern corner of Stone County. The highest elevations in the region are found in the Boston Mountains of Arkansas, where there are extensive uplands of more than 2, feet elevation in Madison, Newton, Washington, Franklin, Johnson, and Pope counties.

A few summit areas in extreme western Newton County exceed 2, feet. The central Ozarks is lower than the southern and western rimlands, but elevations in the St. Francois Mountains generally exceed 1, feet and the highest elevation in Missouri 1, feet is the summit of Taum Sauk Mountain in Iron County. Elevations nearly as high are reached on the western rimlands in western Wright County, Missouri, where the summits near the hamlet of Cedar Gap reach 1, feet above sea level.

The variegated landforms and relief are the result of several factors: different resistance to weathering and erosion of any two adjoining rock masses, the structure tilt of the rock layers, the porosity of the rocks, and the work of streams. For some readers it may be helpful to visualize the Ozarks as a huge layer cake in which the center has been eaten out.

In-facing cuestas hills with steep scarp slopes and gentle back slopes mark layers of resistant rock that are underlain by weaker rocks. The region and its parts have been named carelessly; established use takes precedence over definitive labels. Because the region is neither very high nor mountainous, the terms "plateau" or "upland" seem best to apply.

The Ozarks has the general shape of a parallelogram. The region is part of the Interior Highlands Province, which includes the tightly folded and strongly faulted rocks of the Arkansas Valley and Ouachita Mountains.

The Missouri River Border is a transitional area to the glacial plains of northern Missouri. Included is a narrow band of hills north of the Missouri River. River bottom farms are flooded frequently. Limestone bluffs, undercut by the river and faceted into pyramidal forms by tributary valleys, are bare of vegetation except for a few hardy cedars junipers that cling to precarious ledges. Most of the rolling upland is covered with rich loessal soils suitable for farming, making this region one of the Ozarks most productive agricultural areas.

Hilly belts extend back from the Mississippi River and its tributary streams; an extensive hill belt in the drainage area of the River Aux Vases is known as the Becket Hills. The most extensive upland area is the Barrens in Perry County, where large sinkholes are more numerous than in any other section of the Ozarks. Both the upland and bottomland soils are rich. The physical characteristics described above have influenced the cultural traits and distinguish the Ozarks region.

Milton Rafferty, Professor Emeritus at Missouri State University, states that defining the Ozarks from a cultural perspective is difficult, at best. However, he identified four traits that help our understanding of the Ozarks' culture. The first trait is that the region is rural in general character. Rural suggests open country, farming and contrasts to city life. The second trait is that Ozark heritage has been strongly influenced by the early immigrants mainly from Kentucky and Tennessee principally from Scotch-Irish stock who first occupied the choice lands and established self-sufficient farms.

Rafferty points out that because for many years only a few outsiders entered the area, the economic activities, technologies, beliefs and general way of life came to be patterned after that of the first immigrants.

The third trait common the Ozarks is that Ozarkers have an uncommon sense of place.