Northern Missouri
Maryville's campus is also Missouri's official arboretum
Northwest Missouri State University's Maryville campus doubles as the Missouri Arboretum, turning a college walk into a local tree story with maps, history, and public visitor value.
Maryville’s Northwest campus is not just a college landmark. Northwest says the Missouri State Legislature designated the campus as the official Missouri Arboretum in 1993. That means one of Nodaway County’s best local walks is also a state-recognized tree collection.
The numbers help, but the story is better than the numbers. Northwest lists more than 1,700 trees, more than 160 species, and 452 maintainable acres. Its arboretum history says Thomas Gaunt started an 85-acre tree farm and nursery there in 1857, long before the university was founded. A 2024 Northwest news release adds that about 85 acres of the modern campus came from that Gaunt tree farm and that the Gaunt home has served as the university president’s residence since the school’s founding.
That gives Maryville a different kind of college-town color. A visitor can come for a game, a campus tour, or a county errand and still notice the older tree-farm layer under the school. Northwest has also been adding tree-walk signs and a virtual tour, so this is not a sealed-off campus fact. It is something a resident or visitor can actually use.
If you go, use Northwest’s arboretum page for the current walking tour and map. The best version of this note is not “Maryville has trees.” It is that Maryville has a university campus where the trees are part of the town’s public identity.
Where to see it
- Missouri Arboretum at Northwest Missouri State University
Use Northwest for current walking-tour, map, campus, and visitor information.
References
Where this fits: this note belongs to Nodaway County. See every local note for the county on its page.