This area contains 2,200 acres of wetlands as well as cropland, forest, old fields, and prairie. Facilities/features: a concrete boat ramp, 21 unimproved boat ramps, primitive camping, picnic areas, 3 fishing jetties, fishing dock, Otter Lake (250 acres), Cypress Lake (100 acres), and Otter Lake Natural Area.
When early explorers were making their way across what would be southeastern Missouri, they saw a seemingly endless expanse of bottomland hardwood timber and an interconnecting complex of sloughs and St. Francis River oxbows. The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 caused Otter Slough, Fish Slough, Lick Creek and the Glades Swamp to combine into the large wetland now visited by thousands of migrating waterfowl. Amos Stoddard, whom the county was named for, described the region in 1812: "Nearly half of the lands... are covered with swamps and ponds, and periodically inundated. These swamps, filled with cypress, are mostly dry in the summer;... Many creeks or bayous take their rise in them, and... it is calculated that there are as many as 1 to every 15 miles."
As the explorers moved on, westward expansion and settlement followed. Agricultural development was inevitable, and wetlands were converted to croplands. During the 1960s and 1970s, much of the land on and around Otter Slough was cleared, drained and graded for crop farming, resulting in the decline of both resident and migratory wildlife. Of the estimated original 320,000 acres of wetlands that once existed in Stoddard County only 6,884 acres remain today. Otter Slough is now one of only a few examples of a cypress/tupelo swamp left in Missouri.