Missouri, a state near the geographical center of the United States, has three distinct physiographic divisions:

The boundary between the northern plains and the Ozark region follows the Missouri River from its mouth at St. Louis to Columbia. This also corresponds to the southernmost extent of glaciation during the Pre-Illinoian Stage which destroyed the remnant plateau to the north but left the ancient landforms to the south unaltered. The Ozark boundary runs southwestward from there towards Joplin at the southeast corner of Kansas. The boundary between the Ozark and lowland regions runs southwest from Cape Girardeau on the Mississippi River to the Arkansas border just southwest of Poplar Bluff. Missouri borders eight other US States, more than any other state except Tennessee, which also borders eight states.

The Dissected Till Plains portion of the northern plains region lies in the portion of the state north of the Missouri River, while the Osage plains portion extends into the southwestern portion of the state bordering the Ozark Plateau. Thus the northern plains covers an area slightly more than a third of the state. This region is a beautiful, rolling country, with a great abundance of streams.

It is more hilly and broken in its western half than in its eastern half. The elevation in the extreme northwestern Missouri is about 1,200 ft (370 m). and in the extreme northeastern portion about 500 ft (150 m)., while the rim of the region to the southeast, along the border of the Ozark region, has an elevation of about 900 ft (270 m). The valleys for the larger streams are about 250 to 300 ft (91 m) deep and sometimes 8 to 20 miles (32 km) wide with the country bordering them being the most broken of the region.

The smaller streams have so eroded the whole face of the country that little of the original surface plain is to be seen. The Mississippi River runs along the length of Missouri's eastern side and is skirted throughout by topographic relief of 400 to 600 ft (180 m). elevation.

The Ozarks region is essentially a low dome, with local faulting and minor undulations, dominated by a ridge or, more exactly, a relatively even belt of highland that runs from near the Mississippi river about Ste. Genevieve to McDonald County on the Arkansas border. High rocky bluffs rise precipitously on the Mississippi, sometimes to a height of 150 ft (46 m) or so above the water, from the mouth of the Meramec River to Ste. Genevieve. These mark where that river cuts the Ozark ridge. Across the Mississippi River, this ridge is continued by the Shawnee Hills in Illinois.

The elevations of the crests in Missouri vary from 1,100 to 1,700 ft (520 m). This second physiographic region comprises somewhat less than two-thirds of the area of the state. The Burlington escarpment of Mississippian rocks, which in places is as much as 250 to 300 ft (91 m) in height, runs along the western edge of the Ordovician formations and divides the region into an eastern and a western area, known respectively to physiographers as the Salem Plateau and the Springfield Plateau. Headward erosion by the south flowing tributaries to the White River in northern Arkansas has created a southern escarpment to both the Springfield and Salem plateaus that runs from McDonald through Barry, Stone, Christian, Douglas, and Howell counties. To the south of this escarpment lies some of the more rugged and highly dissected parts of the Missouri Ozarks. The famed Shepherd of the Hills region near Branson lies within this rugged area. To the east of the West Plains plain lies the dissected valleys of the Eleven Point River and the Current River.

Superficially, each is a simple rolling plateau, much broken by erosion (though considerable undissected areas drained by underground channels remain), especially in the east, and dotted with hills. Some of these are residual outliers of the eroded Mississippian limestones to the west, and others are the summits of a Precambrian topography above and around which sedimentary formations were deposited and then eroded. There is no arrangement in chains, but only scattered rounded peaks and short ridges, with winding valleys about them.