The overlook surveys a region shaped by mountains, valleys, mining, transportation, and travel in and around Belleview Valley and Arcadia Valley. Buford Mountain was named for William Buford, who was buried at its base in 1842, and its southernmost of five knobs rises to 1,740 feet above sea level. Belleview Valley, first admired by early French travelers for its wildflowers and tall grasses, took its name from “beautiful view” and had earlier been called Big Lick for its natural salt licks that drew deer, elk, and hunters. By 1890, Graniteville in Belleview Valley was a booming town of more than 700 people with a post office, store, railroad depot, homes, and a hotel for 100 guests, while nearby Missouri red granite had been commercially quarried from 1869 to the present. Beginning in 1853, iron ore traveled for about five years by horse and wagon over Missouri’s longest wooden plank road to Ste. Genevieve and the Mississippi River, with turnouts on the narrow road and seven tolls supporting maintenance. Iron Mountain, considered almost pure iron ore, was mined from 1843 to 1966 through surface and underground operations and became renowned as a natural wonder. Arcadia Valley, named for pastoral beauty, attracted visitors seeking scenery, cool water, and relief from city life, and by 1880 the railroad offered special rates there. Pilot Knob served as a landmark for American Indians and early European travelers, later became both an iron-mining site and a strategically important Civil War location, and the Battle of Pilot Knob at Fort Davidson cost 1,000 soldiers’ lives. Shepherd Mountain supplied ore for the first iron produced west of the Mississippi River in 1815 and later marked the start of the Taum Sauk Trail in 1958.