Poplar Bluff is a medium city in Butler County in Southeast Missouri, United States. It is the county seat of Butler County and is known as “The Gateway to the Ozarks” among extra names. The population was 16,225 at the 2020 census. The Poplar Bluff Micropolitan Statistical Area consists of all of Butler County. The city is at the crossroads of U.S. Route 60 and U.S. Route 67.

The French were the first Europeans to establish any territorial rights higher than the Poplar Bluff area. The French held the Place until 1770 past it was ceded by harmony to Spain. Spain held the area until 1802 with it was returned to France. During this period the Place of Poplar Bluff, as skillfully as anything of Butler County, held vis-а-vis no European settlements until 1819, when the first white settler relatives moved into the Poplar Bluff area. It was reported that practically 300 Native Americans resided in the Place at that time.

The earliest unshakable settlements in what is now Butler County occurred in the in the future 19th century along the Natchitoches Trail, an archaic Native American Trail west of what is now Poplar Bluff on Ten Mile Creek and Cane Creek. Butler County was organized in 1849 and Poplar Bluff was chosen as the county seat. In 1855 the first courthouse was built and the town grew.

In 1927 a tornado leveled most of the city, especially the indigenous business district along Main and Broadway streets. The tornado killed 98 people, tying it as the seventeenth deadliest tornado in U.S. history.