Bootheel

The Missouri Bootheel is the extreme southeasternmost part of the state of Missouri. Technically it is composed of the counties of Dunklin, New Madrid, and Pemiscot, but the term is sometimes informally used for the entire southeastern portion of the state.

The "Bootheel" is in fact shaped as such on maps, and lies between the Mississippi River and the St. Francis River. This area is very flat and predominantly agricultural. The soils are predominately a rich and deep glacial loess. It is well-suited for the growth of rice and cotton and is the predominant center of their production in Missouri, although they are also found in other southeastern Missouri counties.

This area is considered to be far more Southern than Midwestern. Indeed, some have said that it forms something of a cultural unit with northwesternmost Tennessee, the westernmost part of Kentucky, and the Little Egypt portion of Illinois. The locations of the region's television stations that are affiliated with major broadcast networks tend to bear this out; the region's CBS and Fox affiliates are located in nearby Cape Girardeau, while the ABC affiliate is located in Harrisburg, Illinois and the NBC affiliate is in Paducah, Kentucky.

This area, like much of the Lower Mississippi River flood plain (the "Lower Mississippi" in this case being defined as that portion south of the confluence with the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois), has a major aspect of "Delta" culture, in part because of the presence of a relatively large black population that is largely absent from the rest of rural Missouri, giving the area, its music, and its religious makeup the uniqueness associated with rural black culture. The Bootheel is probably the part of Missouri most prone to poverty other than the areas of the Ozark Mountains that have not benefited from tourism. The Bootheel long had something of a reputation for lawlessness; remote settlements along the river banks, often miles from paved roads, provided an ideal environment (and market) for moonshining and bootlegging. This situation has been greatly abated by improved communication and transportation and more widespread legal availability of alcoholic beverages.

Geologically, the New Madrid Fault Zone is named for a locale in this area (pronounced New MAD-rid, although named for Madrid, Spain). This feature is entirely beneath the surface below the deep alluvial deposits of the Mississippi embayment and is nowhere visible as is the San Andreas Fault in California. This fault zone is responsible for a very major series of earthquakes that rocked the area in 1811 and 1812; supposedly it rang church bells along the East Coast and resulted in a subsidence that led to the formation of Reelfoot Lake across the Mississippi River in West Tennessee.

No major cities are located in the Bootheel. Sizeable towns include Kennett, the birthplace of Sheryl Crow, and Sikeston, which is partially in Scott County.