Vol. II, No. 4, Spring 1989  A Region Preserved   a Region of
Preserves  by Robert Flanders  This issue of OzarksWatch is
dedicated to the subject of public land preserves in the Ozarks.
It grew out of the proposition that the various public land
preserves in the Ozarks play a dominant role in the life of the
region, and go far to define its character, both for those who
reside here and the many who visit. Indeed, the Ozarks in the
late twentieth century can scarcely be imagined apart from those
preserves, their utilization, and the continuous controversy
surrounding their management. But the historic character of the
Ozarks may well proceed from its having been a kind of preserve
from the beginning.*  The modern world came late to the Ozarks.
Late, selective, and spotty, it came along the few late-built
railroad corridors, to the few railroad and lead mining towns.
Commercial row-crop farming, the prime-mover of modernization
elsewhere in rural mid-America, was unsuited to most of the
Ozarks. Nor did any gol