Missouri Bootheel History

Why does Missouri have a Bootheel?

Missouri wasn’t supposed to have a bootheel. It wasn’t planned to be this way and it wasn’t included in the original maps. But a wealthy and influential landowner from the area near Caruthersville named John Hardeman Walker changed the course of Missouri history, but nobody really knows why!

The Background for “Squareness”

One of the more interesting geographic features of Missouri is the famous Bootheel. The majority of the border between Missouri and Arkansas lies along a straight line at latitude 36-degrees, 30-minutes north (36°30′). That is the line first envisioned by Congress when the state of Missouri was being established. It was also the dividing line between where slavery would be allowed and where it would not in the Missouri Compromise.

As you can see from from the map at the top of this story, Missouri was supposed to be fairly square. There is a reason for that, too. Governmental officials at the time wanted to first use natural boundaries in establishing new state lines. Secondly, they then used uniform square shapes for governing districts as often as possible. That’s because square states with square counties are easier to design, govern, and manage. If you look at many of the states west of the Mississippi River, you will see that became the norm. That’s why Missouri’s initial design was to be very square until politics — and money got involved.

The Bootheel Mystery

In the far southeastern part of the state, a massive plot of land that was supposed to be in Arkansas was carved out and added to Missouri. It’s still a mystery as to why it was done. That’s because there is no official governmental explanation and no reports from that era about why Walker wanted to be a part of Missouri, not Arkansas.

Although the reason is a mystery, this addition made Missouri unique. The Show Me State is now one of the most recognizable states thanks to some backroom deals that remain a mystery today.

The Czar of the Valley

John Hardeman Walker owned significant portions of land in the areas around present-day Caruthersville where he raised cattle. When the initial southern boundary of Missouri was established by Congress in 1818, it put his land in Arkansas. But he and his neighbors wanted to be in Missouri instead. So he petitioned local and national lawmakers to include this area as part of the new state of Missouri, not within the boundaries of the Arkansas Territory, when they redrew districts in 1820.

By the time he was done “lobbying”, lawmakers in Missouri and Washington DC decided to adopt his idea. They carved out a piece of Arkansas and added it to Missouri’s southeastern boundary. The official wording is as follows:

“Beginning in the middle of the Mississippi river, on the parallel of thirty-six degrees of north latitude; thence west, along that parallel of latitude, to the St. Francois river; thence up, and following the course of that river, in the middle of the main channel thereof, to the parallel of latitude of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes; thence west, along the same, to a point where the said parallel is intersected by a meridian line passing through the middle of the mouth of the Kansas river .”

-The Missouri Enabling Act

That is confusing language to basically say that the southern Missouri border between the St. Francis River and the Mississippi River will extend about 35-miles south . That change to the boundary added about 627,000-acres to Missouri when it became a state in 1821.