"Bluff Tops of Monkey Mountain"

"Bluff Tops of Monkey Mountain"

12x16 pastel on paper

2012

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Monkey Mountain is a Missouri Conservation area located in Northwest Missouri, North of St. Joseph, MO. This is an area my family has often deer hunted for the past 30+ years along with nearby Honey Creek. There is 800 acres of mostly forested bluffs overlooking the Missouri and Nodaway Rivers and 780 acres of Missouri River floodplain. I have painted several scenes from reference photos taken on my hunts. During the hunting seasons plein air painting would probably be prohibited as a safety precaution, so use of photography would be a must. This painting depicts a maintenance road on top of one of the bluffs used by the Missouri Department of Conservation. Along the tops of these bluffs inhabit native grasses that are found to be rich with colors of reds and oranges during the autumn months. The slopes are steep and tiring to climb with thick forests and briar patches, much worse dragging your harvest through. Most people don't hunt this part of Monkey Mountain due to the hikes, and those that do, often don't journey down past the tree lines on the slopes---knowing they would have to drag their harvest up steep hills and through thick grass, forest, and briars.

This area was called "Monkey Mountains," because early settlers deemed the Missouri river bluffs too steep for even monkeys to climb. The Lewis and Clark Expedition opened up this portion of the Missouri state for settlement, when it passed along the southern portion of the area on July 8, 1804. Settlement began on a large scale in 1836. At that time about 20 percent of the county, primarily the steep slopes, was in upland forest cover, consisting mainly of bur oak, white oak, red oak, black walnut, American elm, hickory and basswood. The remainder of the land, mostly ridge tops and rounded knolls, was either grassland or open timber with an understory of native grass, which I have depicted in this painting.