Southeast Missouri
Six counties in the eastern Ozarks, from Missouri’s highest point to its biggest springs. Explore each county’s local guide, or let us plan your day.
The region
Southeast Missouri was settled from the ground up. French miners were digging lead at Mine La Motte around 1720, a century before Missouri became a state, and these hills have been mined, logged, and quarried ever since. Wayne County, organized in 1818, once stretched to the state’s western border and gave all or part of some 32 counties to the map; Madison (1818), St. Francois (1821), Reynolds (1845), Iron (1857), and Carter (1859) followed.
When the mines and mills closed, the land itself became the draw: St. Joe State Park on old company ground, Elephant Rocks, Taum Sauk Mountain, Big Spring, and wild elk back at Peck Ranch. The year now runs from Fredericktown’s Azalea Festival and Piedmont’s UFO Fest in the spring to the Battle of Pilot Knob commemorations and elk bugling season in the fall.
Union troops won the Battle of Fredericktown in October 1861. A Union army of some 3,000 wintered around Van Buren in 1862–63 before leaving for Vicksburg, and in December 1863 Confederates burned the Reynolds County courthouse in Centerville. Then at the Battle of Pilot Knob in 1864, about 1,456 Union defenders in Fort Davidson turned back Sterling Price’s army on its march to St. Louis, blew up their powder magazine, and slipped away in the night.
St. Joe Lead’s mines made St. Francois County the Old Lead Belt, producing more than 8.5 million tons of lead from 1864 to 1972, and the New Lead Belt around Viburnum, in Iron County, still supplies most of the country’s primary lead. Pilot Knob gave up about 1.5 million tons of iron ore, Graniteville’s red granite went into the Eads Bridge, and Madison County’s mines turned out cobalt, nickel, and silver. Around 1900, the sawmill at Grandin in Carter County was the largest in the country.
Read more: St. Francois · Iron · Madison · Carter
In 1941, Lake Wappapello moved the town of Greenville. In the spring of 1973, hundreds of UFO sightings around Piedmont drew a seven-year scientific study, and in 2023 the state named Wayne County the UFO Capital of Missouri. In 2005, the Taum Sauk reservoir failed and sent a billion gallons of water through Johnson’s Shut-Ins. And the rivers still have their say: the Current put Van Buren’s courthouse under six feet of water in 2017, and the Black hit a record flow in July 2026.
County guides
Two big lakes, Sam A. Baker State Park, and the UFO Capital of Missouri.
40 things to do · 18 places to eat · 7 shops
The Old Lead Belt: state parks, mining history, and historic downtown Farmington.
18 things to do · 11 places to eat · 3 shops
Granite shut-ins, Missouri’s only whitewater river, and three centuries of mining.
10 things to do · 7 places to eat · 2 shops
Missouri’s highest point, billion-year-old granite, and a Civil War fort.
6 things to do · 6 places to eat
Johnson’s Shut-Ins, Black River float trips, and miles of national forest.
6 things to do · 1 places to eat
Big Spring, the Current River, and Missouri’s wild elk.
6 things to do · 5 places to eat
Day trip planner
Tell the planner what you like and it builds a day for you: places to visit close together, somewhere to eat, and a shop or two, with the whole route ready to open in Google Maps.
An independent guide. Visit Southeast MO and its county guides are independently run and aren’t affiliated with any county government or tourism bureau. Hours and access change, especially after floods — check with a place before you go, and tell us if something’s out of date.
