The Ozarks Forests

Foresters classify the woods about Branson as Oak-Hickory forest for the dominance of oak and the presence of hickory. You'll find the Ozarks hills filled with black, northern red, scarlet and white oak. Other taller trees are red maple, sugar maple, ash, elm, black walnut, blackgum and red cedar, and in lesser numbers, post oak, blackjack oak and hickory trees.

A recurrent theme in the histories of the Ozarks region, and for that matter in modern life, is the relative inaccessibility of the heavily forested mountains. To be sure, the old wilderness was forbidding, and the steep hills and hollows invited travel only by the most determined.

The Ozarks interior was the last region in Missouri to be settled. Most pioneers chose to establish themselves on the banks or bottomlans of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, or other terrain that affored easier travel. The Ozarks hillas in fact were one of the last areas of the United States to be settled. To see them today is probably to see a view as close to that of unspoiled America as is possible. (Today's timber, however, is all second growth, the forest having been logged completely by 1927.)

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