Annual Meeting at St. JosejjJi. 221 



SOUTH-WEST MISSOURI. 



A MAGNIFICENT FKUIT-GROWING REGION AVHICH IS BEING RAP- 

 IDLY DEVELOPED. 



Southern Missouri, as a fruit-growing district, is destined to 

 become one of the best in the west. Howell county is peculiarly 

 situated for this, being on the southern slope of the Ozarks. The 

 highest points on the Ozarks, as well as on the Kansas City and 

 Memphis railroad, is at Cedar Gap. From that point it is a grad- 

 ual descent until you reach the valley of the river along which the 

 railroad runs. This slope is nearly eighty miles long. At Cedar 

 G-ap is a large orchard started by one of the railroad conductors. 

 Land is here well situated for orchards, and the people are just 

 finding out that there is a grajid location for fruit within their 

 reach. 



Below Cedar Gap is another fine location at Mt. Grove. Here 

 is a broad, level plateau ten miles wide, and admirably situated 

 for both fruit and stock raising. But the choicest location of the 

 whole road is at Olden, Howell county, eight miles above West 

 Plains. The place is protected on the north by the higher range 

 of the mountains, they being some five hundred feet higher both on 

 the north and west. It is on the dividing ridge between the waters 

 of the Black and White rivers, waters on one side flowing to the 

 White and on the other to the Black rivers. It is high and dry,- 

 and the rains disappear in a few hours after they cease falling. 



The soil is of a gravely nature and yet quite productive. The 

 hills are of a mulatto soil, and the valleys are a rich loam. The 

 whole country is covered with a young growth of black jack, oak 

 and hickory. All through the woods grows the prairie grass, blue 

 stem, in abundance, making it also one of ttie best of stock 

 countries, especially for sheep, which are never known to have the 

 foot rot. 



Portions of this upland are rocky or rather covered with a thin 

 coating of flint-rock, from the size of a gravel to that of ten or 

 twenty pounds. Below this is the soil, and without rocks at all. 

 Persons in passing over these rocky points would think them almost 

 worthless, but they are plowed up, and after plowing no rocks are 

 seen. It is a strange country, and it seems after it was finished 

 there came a terrible hail storm of flint-rocks, which covered the 



