Discovering the Ozarks

When the neon lights of the strip called "The Broadway of Country Music" in Branson, Missouri, give way to the morning sun, one can look out and see that this amazing new focus of American entertainment lies amidst the rolling hills and misty valleys of a unique region.

In 1992 five million people came from all over the United States to this small town of 3706, most to see and hear their favorite country music stars. Many left surprised, having found far more than they expected.
For those planning to come to the Ozarks country, learning even a  little of the larger picture can enrich each moment immeasurably. It's our hope with BransonWorld to give you at least a part of that picture here.

The late writer-folklorist Vance Randolph said it well: "There is only one place in the world that really seems like home to me...the Ozark region of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. I was born in Kansas, and never saw the Ozarks until 1899, when my parents brought me down...I was only seven...but I perceived at once that a guide named Price Payne was the greatest man in the world, and that the Ozark country was the garden spot of all creation."

The experience of the Ozarks is one that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. The beauty of the region, with its hills, hollows, forests and glades, its clear-running springs and streams, its peaceful lakes and abundant plant and animal life, abides in the memories of all who have seen it.

The visitor who comes to Branson and the Ozarks in the spring will see red-lavender clouds of blossoming redbud trees, the airy white blooms of the native dogwood, and countless other flowering shrubs and trees. Roadsides along the ribbons of highway that wind through the hills are sprinkled with wildflowers-- bright yellow coreopsis, blue phlox, white hyacinth, red wild columbine, and hundreds more in color and texture incredibly diverse.

A woodland stroll revels the forest understory, wild plum, violets, bluebells, and miniature flowers among the lush green ferns and mosses.

Along the roadsides in the summer colors grow even richer with the deep orange-reds of Indian paintbrush and butterfly bush, tall purple spires of blazing star, black-eyed Susans, and more.

Everywhere the eye falls, from spring to winter, the Ozarks seems perpetually in bloom.

To stand beside an Ozark stream is to be mesmerized by nature. Dragonflies dance above the rippling surface and dark shapes of minnows move like secret throughts beneath. The air is incredibly clean and fresh. Trees whisper along the banks. Birds call, fall silent, then take rustling flight. At times the visitor can only laugh and wonder whether this land is real.

The Ozarks Land

The Ozarks geography at first confuses, with almost as many definitions as people willing to make a guess. Some say the region is 40,000 square miles of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, others say from 50,000 to 60,000 square miles of Illinois, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Most agree, though, that the region is about the size of Florida and bordered generally by the Mississippi River on the east, the Missouri River on the north, the Arkansas River on the south, and the Great Plains on the west.

Often described simply as mountains, the Ozarks actually consist of many kinds of terrain--forests, hills, awesome rock outcroppings, bluffs, hollows, meadows, glades, fields, ridges, valleys, river bottomland, and even prairie.

Branson, Missouri, lies in the interior Ozarks among densely forested hills. Or are they mountains? Some think the land rises too high for hills and too low for mountains, so call them what you please. In any case the highest Ozark hill-mountain lies in the Boston Mountains of Arkansas at 2578 feet, and the highest in Missouri is the Taum Sauk Mountain at 1771 feet. The higher Arkansas elevation, by the way, explains the initially confusing fact that the legendary and all-important White River flows north from Arkansas into the Branson Lakes region.

The unique contours of the Ozarks suggest mystery and ancient origin. Geologists say that over 400 million years ago the region was shaped by molten rock and the forces of drifting continental plates into a land resembling today's, but made up solely of rock. Through millions of years the changing pressures of these drifting plates raised and lowered the region repeatedly, so that at times it was covered by primeval seas. As the seas receded they left layers of the skeletons of tiny organisms, together called dolomite, which under pressure fused into limestone. Additional limestone precipitated from water.

Rivers, streams, waterfalls, and rivulets flowing from both north and south brought mud,  silt, sand and gravel to deposit on the land. Under the pressure of increasing layers of these deposits, the sand fused into sandstone, the silt into clay, the gravel and other substances into aggregate rock. It is limestone, sandstone, and igneous (once molten) rock that form the Ozarks base, or substrate. At the same time water made slightly acidic percolating through decaying forest debris reacted to dissolve the limestone and create the region's abundant caves and intricate groundwater system. (Over 3000 caves have been found in the Missouri Ozarks alone.)

Over 50 million years ago the region settled to its present level, known as the Ozarks Uplift or the Ozarks Plateau. The water and its abrasive contents continued to flow, building, eroding and scupting the landscape and forming the rocky paths that are today's uniquely clear, meandering streams and rivers.

These were not isolated events, but the formation of a land that would shape the character of its inhabitants, and does so even today.

Contributed by Frank Shipe
Be sure to check out his Ozarks gardening website OzarksGardens.com.