Steele, MO

Steele is a Bootheel city in southern Pemiscot County, five miles north of the Arkansas line on U.S. 61 and Missouri 164. Its early reason for being was transportation: when crossing the Little River Swamp was the hard part, this was the route toward Cottonwood Point and the Mississippi River. That crossing role pulled people, freight, a post office, and trade through town; the post office operated from 1896 to 2017. The surrounding flat country is part of the Mississippi lowlands, where former swamp has been turned into cropland.

Steele still serves as the school center for the area through South Pemiscot Schools, which includes East Elementary, Central Elementary, and South Pemiscot High School. The roads point south toward Arkansas and east toward the river corridor, while the town itself sits in the agricultural plain between those destinations. The local scoop is a Bootheel crossing town, with its old post-office era and school system tied to the same regional geography that brought it into being.