LAND

In 1979, a Clovis point, made roughly 10,000 to 13,500 years ago, was found among mastodon bones in the Kimmswick Bone Bed. It provided the first solid evidence that humans interacted with mastodons. Pictured are paleontologist Dr. Russell Graham and Mary Ann Graham at the site of the find, now part of Mastodon State Historic Site.

Courtesy of Missouri State Parks.

St. Louis's nickname, "Mound City," came from earthen mounds built by indigenous people of the Mississippian culture. There were originally over 40 mounds in and around St. Louis, many of which were destroyed to make way for railroad and other developments. Pictured is the last remnant of Big Mound (the largest) during its final destruction in 1869.

Courtesy of Missouri Historical Society, Easterly Daguerreotype Collection. View this photograph collection online.

One of Missouri's nicknames is "the Cave State" because of its 6,300-plus caves. Prior to the arrival of the European settlers, caves were important shelters for indigenous peoples. Today there are many caves that are open to the public through tours offered by the Department of Natural Resources and private entities. Pictured here is one such cave: Onondaga Cave in Crawford County.

Source: RG104 Division of Tourism Photograph Collection #074_0305. View this photograph collection online.

Missouri does not have many dinosaur fossils. In fact, only one site has ever been located in the state. The Late Cretaceous site near Glen Allen in Bollinger County turned out to contain fossilized bones of a specimen named Hypsibema missouriensis, a hadrosaur or duck-billed dinosaur. The fossil was found in 1942. The dinosaur became the official State Dinosaur in 2004. Pictured here is a model by Guy Darrough on display at Powell Gardens.

Courtesy of Kenneth Keith.

This is the introductory page of the famed Louisiana Purchase whereby the United States bought approximately 530 million acres of land west of the Mississippi River from France. The land included what would later become the State of Missouri.

Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration. For further reading, visit NARA's website..

Meriwether Lewis, outfitting the Corps of Discovery, knew he would encounter native peoples on his journey. This list of "Indian Presents" he purchased for the expedition includes pipes, tomahawks, strips of sheet iron and brass, ivory combs, handkerchiefs, beads, bells, cloth, butcher knives, earrings, brooches and rings, totaling $507.35.

Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration.

With the application of Missouri's territorial legislature for admission into the Union, the issue of slavery in the United States once again entered the fore. In order to maintain the Congressional balance between slave and free states, the Missouri Compromise admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and prohibited further slavery in the Louisiana Territory. Missouri would officially be granted statehood on August 10, 1821.

Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration. For further reading, visit NARA's website..

A grand jury of the St. Charles Circuit Court was one of seven in Missouri that protested Congressional restriction of state's rights in the Missouri Compromise by citing a "declaration of American rights, the constitution of the united States, the treaty of Cession [Louisiana Purchase], and the blood of our fathers who achieved our independence."

Courtesy of St. Charles County Circuit Court Administrative Records.

A grand jury of the St. Charles Circuit Court was one of seven in Missouri that protested Congressional restriction of state's rights in the Missouri Compromise by citing a "declaration of American rights, the constitution of the united States, the treaty of Cession [Louisiana Purchase], and the blood of our fathers who achieved our independence."

Courtesy of St. Charles County Circuit Court Administrative Records.

Missouri had twenty-five counties when it entered the Union in 1821. In 1836, controversial treaties with native peoples added land to the northwest in an act designated the Platte Purchase. This extended Missouri's northwest border to the Missouri River, lengthening state access to that important waterway.

Source: Official Manual of the State of Missouri 1945-1946 p. 1077. View the Blue Book Collection online.

St. Charles served as the state's temporary seat of government from 1821 until 1826, while a permanent capital city was in the planning and development stages in Jefferson City. This building where the legislature met in St. Charles is preserved as the First Missouri State Capitol State Historic Site.

Source: RG005 Publications Non-Portrait Collection image #78_013_0868. View this photograph collection online.

Missouri's European settlers often built one-room log cabins with large fireplaces. The hastily-constructed chimneys sometimes consisted of horizontally-laid sticks daubed with mud, which had a tendency to dry out and catch fire. This image is an example of one such cabin in Simmons, MO.

Source: RG110 DNR Land Survey Photograph Collection #18_13.

Powersite Dam was the first hydroelectric dam built in Missouri, impounding Lake Taneycomo on the White River. Taneycomo became the state's largest lake developed in part for tourism until the completion of Bagnell Dam in 1931. Both sites contributed to economic development. Powersite is pictured here while it was under construction in February 1913.

Courtesy of White River Valley Historical Society. View this photograph collection online.

Bagnell Dam on the Osage River created Lake of the Ozarks, the largest man-made lake in the U.S. at the time (1931). Construction began only two months before the stock market crash, but work was uninterrupted and employed thousands. This aerial infrared photograph taken at 10,000 feet by Gerald Massie illustrates why the Lake is nicknamed the Missouri Dragon.

Source: RG998 MS192 Gerald Massie Photograph Collection #64_40-42. View this photograph collection online.

The Little River Drainage project aimed to convert swampland in Missouri's bootheel into productive, habitable agricultural land. Constructed between 1914 and 1928, almost 1,000 miles of ditches and 300 miles of levees drained 1.2 million acres of land.

Source: RG771 Little River Drainage District Photograph Collection, #2409. View this photograph collection online.

In the late 1950s, when nuclear power technology was in its infancy, the University of Missouri began to plan for a nuclear research reactor. To this day, it is the most powerful university reactor and is used for a wide range of research and development applications, including nuclear medicine, archaeological technologies, and isotope development.

Source: RG998 MS192 Gerald Massie Photograph Collection #61_067. View this photograph collection online.

The first bridge to span the Missouri River at Jefferson City was completed in 1896. It carried visitors across the Missouri River until it was replaced in 1956. This aerial photograph shows the "new" and "old" bridges side by side.

Source: RG104 Department of Economic Development Commerce and Industrial Development Division #CID_017_080. Photo by Gerald Massie.

The 1808 inventory of James Clements's property indicates the variety of agriculture on a territorial Mississippi River bottom farm. On his approximately 337 acres, with three slaves, Clements raised cattle, horses, sheep, hogs, hemp, flax, corn, tobacco and cotton. A cotton gin, cotton cards, a spinning wheel and loom indicate the family produced its own cloth.

Courtesy of New Madrid County Probate Court. View the entire case file on MSA's Judicial Records Historical Database.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Clerk.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place fruit, production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

Post-Civil War agriculture largely abandoned labor-intensive crops such as hemp and tobacco once slave labor was gone. In its place, fruit production grew. In 1870, D.M. Douglas was charged with stealing preordered fruit trees waiting for delivery, mostly three-year-old apple trees worth $25 per hundred, but also peach, pear, plum, apricot, nectarine, currant, gooseberry and strawberry plants.

Courtesy of Vernon County Circuit Court.

The Olden Fruit Company, Howell County, incorporated in 1885. By 1888, it had 800 acres under cultivation with approximately 40,000 peach trees, 20,000 apple trees, and ten acres of pear trees. Thirty more acres produced grapes, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries. Fruit is readied for transport in this 1913 packing shed.

Courtesy of Missouri State University Special Collections and Archives, A Fruitful Heritage Collection #100. View this photograph collection online.

The Missouri Fruit Experiment Station was established in 1899 to support Missouri's fruit industry. Its work included development of cultivars, pest and disease control, and best growing practices. This image shows a fifteen-year-old Concord grape vine grafted onto a wild grape.

Courtesy of Missouri State University Special Collections and Archives, A Fruitful Heritage Collection #3001. View this photograph collection online.

Deering Harvester Company reaper binders work in tandem to harvest wheat in Jasper County, a topography that lends itself to large crop farms. In 1906, reaper binders cut wheat stalks, then bound them into bundles which are stacked into shocks to dry before threshing.

Courtesy of Joplin Public Library, Carthage Picture Booklet p. 13. View the full booklet online.

Although crops such as cotton and tobacco were usually commercial crops of large acreages, even small farms on steep terrain grew them as part of diverse cash crop agriculture. Cotton was grown in the Ozarks hills on farms such as this one in Oregon County, and tobacco was cultivated in Taney County into the 1940s.

Courtesy of Missouri State University Special Collections and Archives, A Fruitful Heritage Collection #289. View this photograph collection online.

In the early twentieth century, commercial poultry farming blossomed, aided in part by University of Missouri's 1911 Department of Poultry Husbandry and the State Poultry Experiment Station in 1915. The 1915 state agricultural report estimated the value of poultry products at approximately $58,883,365. This image shows a mixed flock of chickens and turkeys on an early twentieth century Dent County farm.

Source: RG998 MS330 Charles Elliott Gill Photograph Collection #655. View this photograph collection online.

Until local stock laws restrained livestock from running at large (the last in the 1960s), livestock in Missouri often lived on the open range. The most common proof of ownership was a unique set of marks made by cropping or splitting animals' ears. These marks were registered with county clerks in marks and brand books such as this one from Boone County dated 1826.

Courtesy of Boone County History & Culture Center.

A farm supply and marketing cooperative, the MFA was formed in Chariton County in 1914 to improve the economic condition of farmers. By the 1920s, it represented some 400 local co-ops. It diversified to manufacturing livestock feed and supplying and marketing crop products. Pictured is the MFA Milling Company building in Springfield, early 1920s.

Courtesy of Missouri State University Special Collections and Archives, Copenhaver Collection #MOU_LA022_01_0023. View this photograph collection online.

A Holstein cow named Missouri Chief Josephine brought fame to the University of Missouri's Department of Dairy Husbandry in 1910 for world records in milk production. "Old Jo" is pictured here in 1910 with Dairy Short Course students.

Courtesy of University of Missouri Archives, Cows on the Lawn online exhibit. View the exhibit online.

Missouri became known for its fine mules. Hardier than horses, they were used in the Civil War, both World Wars, in agriculture, mining and pulling wagons westward. By the 1870s, Missouri produced more mules than any other state. President Harry Truman is shown here at the 1952 Missouri State fair with a Missouri mule.

Source: RG005 Publications Portrait Collection #B79_F7211.

Hunting and fishing has been embedded in Missouri's culture as long as people have lived here. Fishing contributes to subsistence and provides rural entertainment for urbanites. The lines between the two blur when local fishermen work as river guides for vacationers. That was the niche occupied by Tom Yocum, pictured here on the right.

Courtesy of Linda Myers.

Missouri's earliest commercial enterprise was beaver trapping. The practice soon waned as prices declined and the numbers of furbearing animals dwindled, some species being entirely extirpated from the state. Unlike in earlier days, laws now exist to regulate trapping in order to manage these species. Pictured here, a boy holds up two raccoons in Dent County, c1905.

Source: RG998 MS330 Charles Elliott Gill Photograph Collection #190. View this photograph collection online.

Four men stand beside the "Benton," a railcar that served as a mobile fish tank for the Missouri Fish Commission. The Commission was one of the precursor agencies to the Department of Conservation. The car delivered fish to sites across Missouri in order to stock ponds and waterways. Pictured are William Beller, E.L. Hart, G.W. Zwick, and O'Brien, dated 1903-1905. It wouldn't be until 1937 when Missouri created the Department of Conservation.

Source: RG103.03 Department of Conservation Photograph Collection #043_063. View this photograph collection online.

Part of the Department of Conservation's mission was (and is) to restore lost species that were once native to Missouri. In the late 1930s through the 1980s, these animals have included beavers, white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, Canada geese, northern bobwhite quail, bald eagles, and more. This 1943 image shows a beaver release as part of species restoration efforts.

Source: RG103.03 Department of Conservation Photograph Collection #015_1437. View this photograph collection online.

The Missouri Department of Conservation was created in 1937 "to restore, conserve and regulate Missouri's over-stressed fisheries, forests and wildlife populations." Many factors contributed to the need for conservation, including species and habitat loss. The MDC is unique because it is not funded by state government. Instead, the Department's revenue comes primarily from a 1/8th of 1% sales tax and license fees. The sales tax initiative was passed as Constitutional Amendment #1 in 1976. Today, the Department serves as a model agency other states emulate.

Source: RG000.103 Department of Conservation State Documents Collection Box 14 Folder 1.

French prospectors sought gold and silver, but instead found lead deposits. Moses Austin, an experienced lead miner who introduced new equipment and methods, increased output significantly. Ste. Genevieve was the first shipping point for lead from the southeast mines that at one point produced 70% of U.S. lead output. This lunette by Oscar Berninghaus is in the State Capitol Building.

Source: RG998 MS386 Ken Raveill Photograph Collection #004-166.

Lead mining in southwest Missouri, part of the Tri-State Mining District, began around 1850 in Granby. Successive operations developed in Minersville, Joplin and Aurora. This 1954 map shows the location of all Eagle-Picher Mining Company mines in the Tri-State District.

Courtesy of Missouri Southern State University Spiva Library, #MSSU-G-00000-3439. View this collection online.

Working in a mine is a dangerous job. On March 29, 1888, explosions in Keith and Perry Coal Company's mine near Rich Hill killed twenty-four and injured many of the seventy-one miners. Inspectors determined that the explosions were caused by "careless mining and indiscriminate use of blasting powder by inexperienced miners." This map of the mine (as well as the investigation) appears in the 1888 Bureau of Labor and Statistics Report, aka the "Red Book."

Source: RG108 Department of Labor and Industrial Relations collection. View the Red Books online.