As America marks its 250th anniversary, discover the landscape that shaped what would become Jefferson City.

The 250th anniversary of the United States, celebrated this year, is a fitting occasion to reflect on what our country looked like in 1776 and, particularly for us, the landscape of what would later become Cole County and Jefferson City.

In 1776 , the land that would become Missouri was a vast tapestry of native vegetation and wildly meandering rivers. Our city’s beloved Missouri River flowed without dams or channelization. Vast sandbars, marshes, deep channels, and shallow riffles made river travel treacherous for people but provided ample habitats for a remarkable diversity of fish species and other wildlife. Extensive bottomland forests lined the river, absorbing natural flooding and supporting sycamore, cottonwood, walnut, pecan, and other trees.

Now-extinct birds, such as the Carolina parakeet and passenger pigeon, once filled the skies. However, many of the birds that lived here 250 years ago, and for thousands of years before, are the same resident songbirds, migrating warblers, and waterfowl that continue to delight us today.

In 1776, this land was not a primeval wilderness untouched by humans. Beyond flood plains and valleys, much of Missouri, including Cole County, was an open landscape. The vast prairies, savannas, and woodlands were shaped through thousands of years of landscape management and the intentional use of fire by Native American cultures.

Ecologists classify Cole County as part of the Ozark Border ecoregion, an area of deeply dissected hills and blufflands full of steep slopes, exposed bedrock, and postglacial soil known as loess. The ridgetops of our hilly city were once open woodlands and savannas dominated by oak and hickory, along with perennial plants such as wild quinine and little bluestem grass.

Remnants of that landscape can still be found today. Many of the statuesque white oak, walnut, cottonwood, sycamore, and other trees found in Jefferson City neighborhoods were established naturally from seed, just as they have been in this region for generations.

One expert on Missouri’s vegetation history is Dr. Walter Schroeder, professor emeritus in the University of Missouri Department of Geography. A native son of Old Munichburg, Dr. Schroeder spent 12 summers studying surveyors’ notes preserved in the basement of the Missouri Capitol. Using observations of trees, prairies, and other landscape features, he created a presettlement prairie map of Missouri for the Missouri Department of Conservation in 1981. He also co-authored “Atlas of Missouri Ecoregions” and numerous other publications that continue to shape our understanding of Missouri’s natural history.

To learn more about the vegetation history of Jefferson City and Missouri, visit archive.org/details/2002MoEcoregionsAtlas. To pay tribute to the natural landscape of our region as it looked in 1776, while also supporting nature’s web of life, visit grownative.org for resources on gardening with Missouri native plants.

This map of the pre-Euro-American settlement vegetation of Cole County was developed by Dr. James Harlan, a student of Dr. Walter Schroeder of Jefferson City. The peach color indicates tallgrass prairie, also mapped by Schroeder. The dominant habitats of Cole County were oak-hickory woodlands, with wetlands and bottomland forest associated with the Missouri River.