The Courtois Hills region is an area of the

Ozark Mountains The Ozarks, also known as the Ozark Mountains, Ozark Highlands or Ozark Plateau, is a physiographic region in the U.S. states of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and the extreme southeastern corner of Kansas. The Ozarks cover a significant port ...

in southeast

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

. It is one of several mountainous regions that surround the Ozarks's Salem (or Central) Plateau.

Geography

Although it does not contain the highest peak, the Courtois Hills has most rugged terrain and steepest average slopes of any region of the Missouri Ozarks. It, and the community Courtois, are named after

Courtois Creek Courtois Creek () is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed May 13, 2011 stream in southern Missouri, United States. It shares its name with the nearby town of Courtois, Miss ...

(pronounced "Cote-o-way" or "Curt-o-way"), one of many waterways flowing through a narrow and steep-sided valley separated by sharp ridges. The region was named after this

Crawford County Crawford County is the name of eleven counties in the United States: * Crawford County, Arkansas * Crawford County, Georgia * Crawford County, Illinois * Crawford County, Indiana * Crawford County, Iowa * Crawford County, Kansas * Crawford Count ...

creek because it was one of the earliest settled valleys. The area contains significant

outcrop An outcrop or rocky outcrop is a visible exposure of bedrock or ancient superficial deposits on the surface of the Earth. Features Outcrops do not cover the majority of the Earth's land surface because in most places the bedrock or superficia ...

ping of

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

, ridges of

chert Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a ...

. It also contains several springs including

Greer Spring Greer Spring is a first magnitude spring located in the southeast portion of the Ozark Plateau, in Oregon County in south-central Missouri within the boundaries of the Mark Twain National Forest. The spring is the second largest spring in the Oz ...

, Round Spring and Alley Spring near Eminence and Big Spring near Van Buren. Other common landforms are caves, sinkholes, and

solution cave A solutional cave, solution cave, or karst cave is a cave usually formed in the soluble rock limestone. It is the most frequently occurring type of cave. It can also form in other rocks, including chalk, dolomite, marble, salt beds, and gypsum. ...

s such as the Sinks natural tunnel on Current River tributary Sinking Creek.

Economy

Settlement was delayed by the difficult terrain. The western frontier of the United States had crossed the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

and reached the edges of the Courtois Hills by 1811. Settlers moved in to areas to the east, north, and west of the Central Plateau and its surrounding hills first. The plateau received very slow and gradual immigration later, with settlement of the Courtois Hills occurring last.

Timber Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, w ...

was once the largest contributor to the region's economy. From the late 1880s until almost 1920, the

Missouri Lumber and Mining Company The Missouri Lumber and Mining Company (MLM) was a large timber corporation with headquarters and primary operations in southeast Missouri. The company was formed by Pennsylvania lumbermen who were eager to exploit the untapped timber resourc ...

and several other large lumber companies operated in the region, extracting millions of

board feet The board foot or board-foot is a unit of measurement for the volume of lumber in the United States and Canada. It equals the volume of a length of a board, one foot wide and thick. Board foot can be abbreviated as FBM (for "foot, board measure ...

of lumber from forests of short-leaf Southern yellow pine. The region's narrow ridges are often covered with

oak An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...

. More recently,

lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...

and

zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...

have been discovered and profitably mined. The terrain limits agriculture, as well as settlement, primarily to the valley floors. The best areas for agriculture are concentrated in the southern part of the region, where rivers have made the valleys wider. The Castor, St. Francis,

Black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ...

, and Current Rivers are such valleys. The numerous springs also provide an abundant source of water.

References

Geography

Economy

See also

References