Aux Arcs, Black & White Photography of the Ozarks Region

Aux Arcs, a name that apparently came from the French exploring the region in the late 1600's and early 1700's. Translated loosely, Aux Arcs was “a place of hills or bows”. One interpretation is that the name came from a French pioneer expression “Aux Arkansas”, literally meaning “To the Arkansas Mountains”.The region was part of what became the Louisiana Purchase, settled by other Europeans, and the name slowly changed to the “Ozarks”. Geologically the Ozarks is a broad dome of eroded limestone roughly 47,000 square miles consisting of the St. Francois Mountains, the Salem Plateau, the Springfield Plateau and the Boston Mountains. It covers around one third to one half of Missouri, the upper western region of Arkansas and extends into the northeast corner of Oklahoma.It is a region well watered with clear spring-fed streams with many grist mills, hardwood oak and hickory forests intermixed with yellow pine groves. Due to its karst geology, it has many caves.