State/Province Arkansas

Kansas

Missouri

Oklahoma

The Ozarks, also referred to as the Ozark Mountains, Ozarks Mountain Country, and the Ozark Plateau, are a physiographic and geologic highland region of the central United States. It covers much of the southern half of Missouri and an extensive portion of northwestern and north central Arkansas. The region also extends westward into northeastern Oklahoma and extreme southeastern Kansas. The Shawnee Hills of southwest Illinois, which lie near the eastern edge of this region, are commonly called the "Illinois Ozarks" but are generally not considered part of the true Ozarks.

Although referred to as the Ozark Mountains, the region is actually a high and deeply dissected plateau. Geologically, the area is a broad dome around the Saint Francois Mountains. The Ozark Highlands area, covering nearly 47,000 square miles (122,000 km2), is by far the most extensive mountainous region between the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains. Together, the Ozarks and Ouachita Mountains form an area known as the U.S. Interior Highlands, and are sometimes referred to collectively. For example, the ecoregion called Ozark Mountain Forests includes the Ouachita Mountains, although the Arkansas River Valley and the Ouachitas, both south of the Boston Mountains, are not usually considered part of the Ozarks.

The Ozark Mountains used to be an isolated place to live. Situated in northern Arkansas and parts of Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, the Ozarks were covered by forests. The first people to live there were the Indians who were nicknamed "bluff dwellers" because they lived in the shelter of the mountains. The settlers who arrived in the 1800s were self-supporting, which means they grew their own food, hunted and raised free-range animals. Because it was isolated, a unique culture developed.

The Arkansas Folk Festival is an annual celebration of traditional Ozark culture, held the third weekend in April in Mountain View, Arkansas. Highlights are a parade, folk music concerts and workshops, a blacksmith shop, and demonstrations of such crafts as making soap, brooms, candles, pottery, dolls and toys.

The Ozark region is characterized by many underground streams and springs. Tourism is one of the region's chief industries and was given a boost by Harold Bell Wright's novel The Shepherd of the Hills (1907), which romanticized the Ozarks.