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The Ozarks Are Not Mountains—Or Are They?

  • Brandon Broughton
  • 2 hours ago
  • 7 min read

The earliest recorded use of the term “Ozark Mountains” appears in scientist Edwin James’ account of Stephen H. Long’s westward expedition of 1819 and 1820. James wrote at length about the “small group of mountains… which have received from Major Long… the name of Ozark mountains.” The name stuck, and today the words “Ozark Mountains” can be seen everywhere from commercial branding to country rock album covers.


The mountain label has long proved contentious. An 1881 article from the Glasgow Central Missourian, reprinted in the Springfield Patriot-Advertiser, clarifies that the “so-called Ozark Mountain Range” is in reality “not mountainous,” but merely “an area of very high table land”—in other words, a plateau. This consensus has endured: It isn’t that hills are tall, but rather that the valleys are deep.


The Ozarks are not mountains. Right?


The Boxley Valley of northwest Arkansas, photographed from a high vantage point. Boxley Baptist Church is visible in the foreground.
The Boxley Valley of northwest Arkansas with Boxley Baptist Church in the foreground. Photograph by Bob Linder, Bob Linder Collection.

What Is a Mountain, Anyway?

Before resurrecting the long-settled debate of whether the Ozarks are mountains, first we must answer a deceptively simple question: What is a mountain?


We might start by looking at the world’s iconic mountains, such as Mt. Everest, the Matterhorn, or Mt. Fuji, and identifying their shared defining features. We could say, then, that a mountain is a conspicuous prominence that is significantly taller than the surrounding terrain.


How tall does it need to be, though? Taum Sauk Mountain is Missouri’s highest point by elevation, reaching 1,772 feet above sea level, but it only rises about 500 feet above the landscape at its base. Nevertheless, Taum Sauk and the rest of the St. Francois peaks are referred to as mountains without qualification. It seems that height alone is not enough when defining a mountain.


Perhaps mountains are better defined by how they are formed. Most mountains are the result of continental collisions. For example, Mt. Everest formed when the Earth’s crust crumpled upwards as the ancient Indian subcontinent collided with Asia.


Other mountains result from completely different processes. Consider Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, which is the tallest mountain on Earth if measured from its undersea base. Mauna Kea was formed as the Pacific tectonic plate slid over a plume of magma beneath the Earth’s crust. That magma pushed up through the crust, creating volcanoes such as Mauna Kea. These volcanoes expelled new rock, eventually becoming the Hawaiian islands.


A pickup truck drives along a winding road in the Boston Mountains of Arkansas.
Without a clear definition of "mountain," how can we categorize landscapes like the Boston Mountains of Arkansas, at the southern edge of the Ozarks? Photograph by Bob Linder, Bob Linder Collection.

Now we have a problem. Mt. Everest, the highest peak on Earth, and Mauna Kea, the tallest mountain, are the result of completely different processes. The two contenders for the “World’s Largest Mountain” title aren’t even the same thing, geologically-speaking.


If our criteria for what a mountain is can’t use height alone and isn’t even tied to a specific geological process, then what is a mountain, anyway?


According to the United States Geological Survey, “there are no official definitions for generic terms,” like mountain, “as applied to geographic features.” Additionally, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names “does not have an official definition of… mountain.”


Even academics sidestep the question. Geologist Stephen Marshak’s Earth: Portrait of a Planet is one of the most widely read introductory geology textbooks. While it contains detailed descriptions of the various ways in which mountains can form, it does not provide a definition of the term “mountain.”


“Mountain,” then, is just a category into which we put broadly similar geological formations that can result from very different processes. Mt. Everest is an orogenic mountain created by the collision of tectonic plates. Mauna Kea is a shield volcano created by the accumulation of lava. The fact that they are both “mountains” is a convention of language rather than a scientific observation.


Where does that leave our Ozarks, then? If there is no official, broad definition of “mountain,” then is it even possible to say whether the Ozarks–whatever they are–are or are not mountains?


What Are the Ozarks?

The story begins half a billion years ago, when the Ozarks were the floor of a shallow sea. According to A. G. Unklesbay and Jerry D. Vineyard’s Missouri Geology, “carbonate sediments, especially limestone, began to accumulate on the sea floor” during this period. When the waters receded, those carbonate rocks became the bedrock of the Ozarks.


A map of the Ozarks with its various subregions. At the western edge of the Ozarks is the Springfield Plateau, which begins in northeastern Oklahoma and extends into southwest Missouri and north-central Arkansas. To the south, the Boston Mountains constitute the fringe of the Ozarks, extending from northeastern Oklahoma and into north-central Arkansas. The Salem Plateau constitutes the majority of the Ozarks, with its southern reaches bordering on the northern part of the Springfield Plateau in Arkansas and extended up through south and central Missouri. The northern edge of the Salem Plateau roughly corresponds with the Missouri River, and its eastern edge extends to just west of Cape Girardeau. Within the Salem Plateau are the St. Francois Mountains, which cover a relatively small portion of southeastern Missouri.
A map of the geological Ozarks and its subregions. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Then, 300 million years ago, the ancient geological core of North America collided with other landmasses to form the supercontinent Pangaea. This collision caused deformations on the North American landmass which are now the Appalachian Mountains as well as the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma.


When the Ouachita Mountains formed, their weight pressed down on the Earth’s crust below. As a result, the crust bulged up beneath the Ozarks, like a giant seesaw with the heavy Ouachitas weighing down one end and the lighter Ozarks rising on the other. This action gradually elevated the Ozarks into a slightly convex plateau or dome according to U.S. Geological Survey researchers Mark R. Hudson and Kenzie J. Turner.


A Frisco locomotive (EMD GP35 number 715) pulls a train along the bluffs of the Gasconade River. Bare trees cover the slope below the tracks.
A train pulled by the Frisco's EMD GP35 locomotive number 715 traveling along the bluffs of the Gasconade River in Pulaski County. Photograph by Mike Condren, Mike Condren Collection.

At this point, we have all of the ingredients for the rugged Ozarks landscape that we are familiar with today: Elevation, water, and highly-dissolvable rocks such as limestone and dolomite. Over the course of millions of years, slightly acidic rivers and streams followed the pull of gravity on this gently curved dome, cutting deep valleys through the carbonate stones of the Ozark plateau.


What are the Ozarks, then? They are what is known as a “dissected plateau,” or an elevated area of land that has been carved out by erosion. The “peaks” of the Ozarks are portions of that plateau which are less eroded than their surroundings. The valleys, rivers, and streams at the "base" of the Ozarks are where the landscape-shaping action continues today.


There Are Mountains in the Ozarks...

A granite boulder or "Elephant Rock" at Elephant Rocks State Park sits atop a larger outcropping of rock. The boulder is worn smooth by years of erosion and is subdivided by deep faults.
A granite boulder or "elephant rock" at Elephant Rocks State Park, Iron County, Missouri. These 1.5-billion-year-old granites formed in magma pools deep beneath the ancient St. Francois Mountains. Photograph by Ben Divin, Show Me Missouri.

Before tackling the Ozarks at large, let’s turn our attention to one of the oldest mountain ranges in North America: The St. Francois Mountains. While these mountains are geographically part of the Ozarks, their geological history runs much deeper. According to Unklesbay and Vineyard, Taum Sauk Mountain and the other St. Francois peaks are the roots of a system of volcanoes that dominated the landscape 1.5 billion years ago. Due to their volcanic history, the St. Francois Mountains can be considered “true mountains.” Therefore, it can be said that there are mountains in the Ozarks.


However, when we ask “are the Ozarks mountains,” we’re not just talking about the knobs of the St. Francois range. We’re also thinking about the rolling hills of the Springfield plain, the valleys of the Meramec and Gasconade and White Rivers, and the rugged crags and gaps of the Boston Mountains.


But Are the Ozarks Mountains?

We can’t answer the question of whether the Ozarks are mountains scientifically because, as far as science is concerned, there is no such thing as a “mountain.” Rather, there are more specific types of topographic features that we call mountains out of convention such as orogenic mountains like Everest and volcanic peaks like Mauna Kea. There is another set of landscape features that is occasionally included in the “mountain” category that happens to include the Ozarks.


An illustrated postcard sold by the Mid-West Map Company of Aurora, Missouri, circa 1930. The postcard depicts a bucolic Ozarks scene--a view from the top of a bluff, looking down upon a forested landscape bisected by a river. A cedar tree fills the left side of the image. Text on the postcard reads "A Bit of the Ozarks from a Frisco Car Window."
A postcard sold by the Mid-West Map Company of Aurora, Missouri circa 1930 depicting an Ozarks river.

We’ve established that the Ozarks are a dissected plateau. Dissected plateaus are occasionally referred to as “plateau mountains.” According to National Geographic, plateau mountains form when “colliding tectonic plates push up the land without folding or faulting. They are then shaped by weathering and erosion.” This is more or less the geological history of the Ozarks, although our uplift was only indirectly caused by tectonic collisions.


So, are the Ozarks mountains? You could call them plateau mountains, as long as you remember that they are not mountains in the same sense as the Rockies, the Ouachitas, or even the St. Francois Mountains. However, this argument relies on uncommon geological terminology–and isn’t it missing the point, anyway?


Whether you can accurately call the Ozarks mountains is ultimately a matter of language, not science. Simple labels for landforms such as “mountain” mask the underlying complexity of the features they describe, whether applied to Everest, Mauna Kea, or the Ozarks.


Quibbling over whether the Ozarks fit the nonexistent criteria for mountainhood is missing the forests for the trees–or maybe missing the hills for the hollers. The story of how the Ozarks acquired its distinctive, rugged, and beautiful landscape tells us much more than the mountain/not-mountain label ever could.


From billion-year-old volcanoes looming over the landscape, to an ancient sea-floor, to an uplifted plateau being slowly eaten away by a dense network of rivers and streams, the deep-time history of the Ozarks is beautiful, fascinating, and strange. I’ll take that over mountain status any day.


Now take a hike.


Farmland in the Boxley Valley of Northwest Arkansas. The forested landscape in the background is the muted green of spring or summer. Freshly tilled earth is surrounded by a simple, low fence. An outbuilding with a rusted tin roof is flanked by various farming implements.
Farmland in the Boxley Valley of northwest Arkansas. Photograph by Bob Linder, Bob Linder Collection.

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