The St. Francois Mountains in southeast Missouri are a mountain range of Precambrian igneous mountains rising over the Ozark Plateau. This range is one of the oldest exposures of igneous rock in North America.
The name of the range is spelled out as Saint Francois Mountains in official GNIS sources, but it is sometimes misspelled in use as St. Francis Mountains to match the anglicized pronunciation of both the range and St. Francois County.
A view towards the St. Francois range from Knob Lick Mountain, a granite and rhyolite knob on the edge of the range
Boulders in Elephant Rocks State Park are residual boulders of weathered Graniteville Granite, a pluton formed 1.4 billion years ago in the Proterozoic by the cooling of magma.
Granite from this region was used for cobblestones on the St. Louis wharf and in the piers of the Eads Bridge (background).
Taum Sauk Mountain is the highest point in Missouri.
Missouri is a landlocked state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it borders Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas to the south and Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska to the west. In the south are the Ozarks, a forested highland, providing timber, minerals, and recreation. The Missouri River, after which the state is named, flows through the center and into the Mississippi River, which makes up the eastern border. With over six million residents, it is the 18th-most populous state of the country. The largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Columbia; the capital is Jefferson City.
Missouri
The Gateway Arch in St. Louis
Fur Traders Descending the Missouri by Missouri painter George Caleb Bingham
Price's Raid in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, 1864