The giant cypress dominating the swamp provides a lot of nesting platforms for eagles and other birds. There are seven natural areas and 99 archaeological sites recorded on the refuge. What's contained inside that boundary is the most pristine region of the Mingo Swamp and accompanying Ozark Highlands. The Ozark Highlands Auto Tour (a road open March-to-November, as wildlife and weather conditions permit) wraps around the wilderness area on the south, west and north. The Wilderness area contains swamp, riparian areas and a piece of the Ozark Plateau uplands. In 1976 Congress designated the 7,730-acre Mingo Wilderness. Take a float down the Mingo River today and you wouldn't know the difference. It took years to recover but careful management has brought the swamp back to life.
When they purchased the land it had been devastated by years of corporate and personal mismanagement: the lush swamp had been turned into an eroded wasteland. In 1945, the US Fish & Wildlife Service bought 21,676 acres of the Mingo Swamp and created Mingo National Wildlife Reserve.
That effort failed and died in the 1930's. That brought in developers who thought they could drain all the swamps in the Bootheel and turn it into an attractive place to live. By 1910 the farmers and lumber interests had denuded most of the Bootheel area and they began to default on the property taxes rather than support an unprofitable holding. Settlers and farmers began arriving in the early 1800's and brought the bad agricultural practices of the day with them. Native Americans came to the area to hunt and left thousands of years of evidence of their success behind. The abandoned riverbed became a rich and fertile swamp, fed regularly by overflows from the nearby St. Then the river eroded its way through Crowley's Ridge to the north and the river flowed more easterly to join the Ohio River where it does now. The purpose of Mingo National Wildlife Refuge is two-fold: preserve a bottomland hardwood habitat and provide resident and migratory waterfowl with nesting, feeding, breeding and resting habitat.Ībout 18,000 years ago the Mississippi River flowed through this area. The southwestern boundary of the refuge is against Lake Wappapello. Mingo National Wildlife Refuge is a 21,676-acre property in the Bootheel of Missouri.
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