Geography of St. Louis

[1] The city is built primarily on bluffs and terraces that rise 100–200 feet (30–61 m) above the western banks of the Mississippi River, just south of the Missouri-Mississippi confluence.

Much of the area is a fertile and gently rolling prairie that features low hills and broad, shallow valleys.

Significant deposits of coal, brick clay, and millerite ore were once mined in the city, and the predominant surface rock, the St. Louis Limestone, is used as dimension stone and rubble for construction.

St. Louis is also just north of the New Madrid Seismic Zone which in 1811–12 produced a series of earthquakes that are the largest known in the contiguous United States.

The divisions have no legal standing, although some neighborhood associations administer grants or hold veto power over historic-district development.

Some hold avenues of massive stone edifices built as palaces for heads of state visiting the 1904 World's Fair.

Others offer tidy working-class bungalows, loft districts, or areas hard-hit by social problems and unemployment.

Among the best-known, architecturally significant, or well-visited neighborhoods are Downtown, Midtown, Benton Park, Carondelet, the Central West End, Clayton/Tamm (Dogtown), Dutchtown South, Forest Park Southeast, Grand Center, The Hill, Lafayette Square, Shaw (home to the Missouri Botanical Garden and named after the Garden's founder, Henry Shaw), Southwest Garden, Soulard, Tower Grove East, Tower Grove South, Hortense Place and Wydown/Skinker.

[5] It straddles the border between USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 6B and 7A,[6] indicating the coldest temperature of the year is typically around 0 °F (−18 °C).

Winter storm systems, such as Alberta clippers and Panhandle hooks, can bring days of heavy freezing rain, ice pellets, and snowfall.

Before the founding of the city, the area was prairie and open forest maintained by burning by Native Americans.

Large mammals found in the city include urbanized coyotes and occasionally a stray whitetail deer.

Eastern gray squirrel, cottontail rabbit, and other rodents are abundant, as well as the nocturnal and rarely seen opossum.

Winter populations of bald eagles are found by the Mississippi River around the Chain of Rocks Bridge.

The Eurasian tree sparrow, an introduced species, is limited in North America to the counties surrounding St. Louis.

Populations of honey bees have sharply declined in recent years, and numerous species of pollinator insects have filled their ecological niche.