OZARK PLATEAU

     The Ozark Plateau—often called the Ozarks—is a vast highland region stretching across several states in the central United States. It spans approximately 47,000 square miles, making it the largest elevated landmass between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains. While popularly referred to as the Ozark "Mountains," this region is not a true mountain range but rather an ancient, deeply eroded plateau.

Geographic Scope:

• Missouri: The Ozarks cover much of southern Missouri, stretching from just south of the Missouri River down to the Arkansas border. Cities like Springfield and Branson lie within this area.

• Arkansas: In northern Arkansas, the Ozarks include the rugged Boston Mountains and the flatter Springfield Plateau, extending southward toward the Arkansas River Valley.

• Oklahoma: The plateau reaches into eastern Oklahoma, particularly in Adair, Cherokee, and Delaware counties.

• Kansas: A small corner of southeastern Kansas, mainly Cherokee County, also forms part of the Ozark region.

Geological Background:

     Despite their rugged terrain, the Ozarks are not mountains in the geological sense. They are part of an uplifted plateau—land that was raised slowly over time rather than pushed up dramatically by direct tectonic collision. This uplift occurred hundreds of millions of years ago during the late Paleozoic Era, as a distant effect of massive continental collisions to the south.

     Roughly 300 million years ago, two ancient landmasses—Gondwana (which included what are now South America and Africa) and Laurasia (which included North America)—collided. This tectonic event raised the Ouachita Mountains in what is now Arkansas. Though not within the direct collision zone, the Ozark Plateau was gradually uplifted in response to the immense stresses of this continental crash—a phenomenon geologists call "far-field tectonics."

     Over the following eons, the Ozarks were shaped not by further tectonic upheaval but by erosion. Water—rivers, rainfall, and underground springs—slowly carved valleys, ridges, and sinkholes, exposing ancient sedimentary rock and forming the region’s signature karst landscape, which includes caves, springs, and underground streams.

     So while the Ozarks may look like mountains, they are, geologically speaking, a worn-down, elevated plateau—its dramatic topography sculpted more by the patient work of erosion than by the violence of mountain-building.