A Callaway Retrospective
How Ecological and Geographical Features Have Shaped Who We Are
By Tom Riley
As we reflect on how Callawegians have lived and worked for the last 200 years, it is important to locate our history in the context of this place. More than one may realize, our settlements, economy, and livelihoods have been profoundly impacted by ecological and geographical conditions that arose millions of years ago. Between glacial plains, ancient mountain plateaus, and along the greatest river in North America, Callaway County’s history has always been intimately connected to the environmental conditions that meet here.
The primary geological features in Callaway County arose due to the intersection between the Ozark Plateau to the south and the glacial plains to the north. In the Paleozoic era, beginning nearly 500 million years ago, the tectonic plates of Gondwana (consisting then of South America, Africa, and Antarctica) collided with the North American Plate as the land masses crushed together to create the super continent Pangea. These collisions caused an immense area of nearly 50,000 square miles (covering parts of what are now four states) to rise into the Ozark Plateau. The rocks that had been part of the sea floor rose so high that this area sat above the seas for hundreds of millions of years, during which time erosion slowly chiseled away creating the mountainous terrain we see today. The Ozarks were created not by mountains arising above the ground, but by valleys burrowing into it.
That portion of the Ozark Plateau that remains today contains large deposits of limestone, a sedimentary rock formed by the accretion of shells and skeletons on the sea floor prior to the collision of the tectonic plates. Because limestone is porous and easily dissolved by carbonic acid in rainwater, Missouri, the “Cave State,” is home to over 6,000 caves throughout the Ozark region. The erosion that created the hilly terrain also left much of the Ozarks with soil of relatively low fertility, which affected settlement patterns and economic disparities between the northern and southern portion of the state that exist to this day.
The Ozark foothills now extend north to Callaway County, which, not coincidentally, is located at the southern edge of the glacial plains. During the last ice age in the Pleistocene period, 2.6 million to 12,000 years ago, glaciers stretched from the north pole as far south as what is now mid-Missouri. The giant ice sheets would advance and then recede in inter-glacial periods (one of which we are in now) scouring the terrain and creating vast plains. When the last glacier receded, only about 15,000 years ago, the massive amount of melt water created the Missouri River valley along its southern edge.
The Missouri River now flows over 2,000 miles from the Rocky Mountains to its mouth at the Mississippi. It is the longest river in North America and drains over 500,000 square miles, one-sixth of the continental United States. Combined, the Missouri-Mississippi river system is the fourth longest in the world. In fact, if it were not for the earlier use of the Mississippi by settlers before the full breadth of the Missouri was known, the Mississippi would have been classified as a tributary to the Mighty Missouri. The river divides the state between the rocky remnants of the Ozark Plateau to the south and the glacial plains, filled with sediment blown by the wind or carried by the “Big Muddy” to the north, with rich soil that has supported intensive agriculture for centuries.
Here lies Callaway County. A land containing parts of the plains in the north and west and bounded by the Ozark foothills and the Missouri River in the south. These features and, specifically, their intersection here define our geography in ways that are still seen today. Although Callaway County is over 840 square miles, the 7th largest county in the state, its northern border is never further than 35 miles from the Missouri River. Since the Missouri River’s watershed covers over a half million miles, one would assume that all of Callaway County would lie entirely within it, but the river does not even drain the entire county. Starting in Auxvasse, the land slopes to the north carrying all water from that point into the Salt River, which eventually flows northeast into the Mississippi. These miles of flat ground, where the glaciers finally stopped at the Ozarks, would ultimately surpass even the Missouri River itself as the most important gateway to the west.
The role of the Missouri River in westward migration began when the mouth of the river was discovered by French explorers Jacque Marquette and Louis Joliet as they were descending the Mississippi in 1673. The river (and eventually the state) were named for an Indian Tribe meaning those with big canoes, but European exploration along the river was slow to develop. In the 1700’s, French fur traders began navigating upstream on the Missouri, but no permanent settlements were made far from St. Louis for nearly a century. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Lewis and Clark were the first to explore the river to its headwaters in Montana, hoping to find a water path clear to the Pacific, and they stopped early in their journey at a “high commanding position” across from the Osage River. That spot appears to have been an isolated outcropping of limestone stretching from the river for nearly 600 yards in what would become Callaway County.
This hill without design, or Cote Sans Dessein, soon became the western most permanent settlement in the United States when it was founded by French fur traders. By the time of the War of 1812, the settlement included a dry goods store, grocery, blacksmith shop, tavern and two forts, the site of several pitched battles. Eventually populated with over 300 people including families such as Roi, Thibault, and Vincennes, Cote Sans Dessein became an important site for trapping and hunting the beavers, deer, and bears in the area as well as a prosperous trading post. In fact, Cote San Dessein was such a significant site that after Missouri was admitted as a state in 1821, it was the first proposed location for the state capitol, rejected only due to problems with land titles, which led the state to move the capitol across the river. Cote Sans Dessein survived until the early 1900’s, when frequent flooding forced abandonment of the town.
While the Missouri River was instrumental in the exploration of the west at the beginning of the 1800’s, it did not become as significant a route for trade or settlement as certain overland trails due to its strong eastward current. These overland routes, on the other hand, eventually led hundreds of thousands of pioneers west in one of history’s most monumental migrations, and nearly all of them passed straight through Callaway County. The first of the westward paths from St. Louis west was marked by the sons of Daniel Boone around 1805 along an old Indian trace leading to a large salt lick over 100 miles to the west. Because salt was such an important resource for curing meat, the area around “Boone’s Lick” was quickly developed as the town of Franklin, Missouri, and the trail became known as the “Boonslick Trail.”
The Boonslick Trail ran through northern Callaway County (the county being named for Daniel Boone’s grandson, Captain James Callaway) because it was the first flat area north of the Missouri River and the Ozarks. After the cessation of the War of 1812 facilitated more westward expansion, this trail carried nearly all west-bound settlers until the advent of the railroad. In 1821, one of the partners in the Boone’s Lick business led the first caravan from Franklin southwest to Santa Fe, New Mexico, creating America’s first route to the west, the Santa Fe Trail. Boonslick Trail eventually connected to both the Oregon and California Trails, and was the main route for westward expansion followed by all types of explorers, settlers, and scofflaws, including Kit Carson, Joseph Smith and the Mormons, prospectors in the California gold rush, the ill-fated Donner Party, and Frank and Jesse James. The dirt path initially travelled to provide salt along the frontier eventually became the route of U.S. Highway 40 in 1926 and then Interstate 70 after Dwight Eisenhower created the interstate highway system in 1956.
Not only did the Boonslick Trail carry most pioneers heading further west, but also the families that settled along this route after 1815. Most of the settlers in this region came from the Appalachian areas of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee due in large part to the similarity of the terrain (unsurprising when one considers that the same tectonic collision that created the Ozarks also created the Appalachian Mountains). These settlers brought their culture and their slaves to replicate the economic and agricultural practices of the upper south.
The southern influence in this area was so pervasive prior to the Civil War that the area along the Missouri River from Callaway in the east to Saline County in the west was known as “Little Dixie.” While the shorter growing season did not lend itself to cotton and, hence, large plantations, slaveholders settled in the fertile Missouri valley from Callaway west growing tobacco and, later, hemp in mostly small farms. In 1860, Missouri was the leading hemp producing state in the country and more than half of all hemp was produced in Little Dixie. While the slave population in the entire state gradually decreased in the antebellum period until it was less than 10% at the outset of the Civil War, the slave population in Little Dixie actually grew to over 28%. In 1860, Callaway County had 17,499 residents, 4,523 of whom were slaves, the fourth highest population of slaves in any county in the state.
While the Missouri River Valley spreads into fertile prairie ground in Callaway and further west, the land to the east is more mountainous and less conducive to intensive agriculture. So, while southern settlers recognized the similarity of Little Dixie to their homelands in Appalachia, the region to the east attracted immigrants due to its similarity to the mountains in eastern Germany. In 1834, Dutzow became the first German settlement in the land east of Callaway County along the Missouri River. By 1860, German immigrants made up nearly one-third of the population in what was then called the “Missouri Rhineland.” Here, the steep hills lent themselves to viticulture rather than hemp production. These geographical conditions together with the German’s strident opposition to slavery, resulted in the Missouri Rhineland having a slave population of less than 5% at the outset of the Civil War.
Again, Callaway County’s history was impacted by its location on the border—this time between the abolitionist Missouri Rhineland to the east and the slaveholding Little Dixie area west. While the political sentiments of Callaway residents were hardly pro-Union (of the 2,632 votes cast in Callaway County in the 1860 election, Abraham Lincoln received only 15), Callawegians opposed secession at the beginning of the war. Frequently caught between Union troops, the Confederate-supporting State Militia, and bands of abolitionist “St. Louis Dutch,” Callaway troops famously negotiated an agreement allowing Union troops to pass through the county during the war, which gave rise to the notion that Callaway County must have been a sovereign state to have entered a treaty and thus became known as the Kingdom of Callaway.
After the Civil War, Callaway County’s economy remained largely agricultural, with row crop farms in the prairies of the north and more livestock in the south, but its subsequent industrial development also reflected its ancient geological past. Outside the sediment-rich farmland along the Missouri River, much of Callaway County’s land is notable for its high amount of clay. This Missouri clay was the source for this area’s most important industry for over a century. Clay is a sedimentary material containing fine particles of eroded rock, which can be molded when wet and baked to make ceramics, such as bricks. Missouri’s large clay deposits are the product of the weathering of rocks occurring for hundreds of millions of years above sea level as well as the sediments pushed south by the glacial ice sheets or washed downstream by the Missouri River. Missouri clays are specifically well-suited for refractory bricks. Refractory, or firebricks, are made from clay with an incredibly high melting point, allowing these materials to be used to line kilns, furnaces, or boilers.
Missouri has been one of the nation’s leading producer of firebricks for more than a century, with the first firebrick plant built in St. Louis around 1845. Within 50 years, Missouri had 12 firebrick plants, with both A.P. Green and Harbison-Walker operating plants in Callaway County. The firebrick industry has created more jobs than any other industry besides agriculture during Callaway’s history. The abundance of firebricks explains the origin of the Brick District in Fulton, with firebricks manufactured in the area laid out in the town’s center in the early 20th century.
The firebricks were not just used in Fulton’s streets as they literally travelled the world lining the boilers in Navy ships. In fact, firebricks captioned with “Fulton Missouri” can be found on walkways in Honolulu, Hawaii, as they were salvaged from ships sunk in the attack at Pearl Harbor. Brick refractories continued to be one of the county’s largest employers until the turn of this century as declining domestic steel production eventually caused most plants to close.
If the fire of kilns represented the height of industry in the Callaway County of the early 20th century, nuclear fission replaced it by the end. In 1973, the Ameren corporation selected a spot north of the Missouri River near Steedman as the site for a nuclear power plant. This location was chosen because of its proximity to the Missouri River, where 585,000 gallons of water must be pumped every minute to cool the nuclear reactor. The river was not only key to the operation of the plant, but also essential to its construction. Much of the equipment and materials for the plant were so large and heavy, they had to be transported upstream by barge from New Orleans to St. Louis and then up the Missouri River to a railroad track that Ameren had installed specifically to haul equipment and materials for the plant’s construction. The plant’s cooling tower alone is one of the largest buildings in the state, 430 feet wide and 553 feet tall, only 77 feet shorter than the St. Louis Arch (at the request of legislators who wanted the Arch to remain the tallest structure in Missouri). The plant was completed and operational by 1984, and, through the end of 2019, the Callaway nuclear plant had produced more electricity than all but three nuclear plants in the entire world. The Callaway plant currently employs nearly 1,000 people, provides electricity to 1.2 million, and is one of the most important business operations in the entire state.
While the Missouri River explains the location of Missouri’s only nuclear plant, the overland route to the north has remained just as influential to Callaway’s economic development. Where the Boonslick trail emerged from the hills in the east to the flatter prairies of Callaway County, it eventually split into three heavily-travelled paths: the original Boonslick Trail (established before 1810), a more southerly route that ran due west to Columbia, called the St. Charles Road, (in 1821), and later an even more southerly route that passed through Fulton to connect St. Louis to Jefferson City, called the State Road (in 1825). This southerly road can still be followed on portions of “St. Louis Road” located at different points in Fulton from the road angling toward the Fulton Country Club (where its old location can still be seen as an indentation running through the golf course) into the downtown.
The spot where these paths diverged in eastern Callaway County was an ideal location for a settlement. This settlement was informally called Fruits for the first postmaster, Alec Fruite, appointed in 1828. Due to his opposition to slavery, he lost his post a few years later, and the settlement was officially named Williamsburg for his successor, Harvey L. Williams, in 1835.
Williamsburg was founded based on its proximity to these trails, which still support the town’s economy and much of the county’s tourism revenue. Crane’s Country Store began in the town of Mineola, Missouri, just to the east of Williamsburg along the Loutre River in 1899. The Crane family later purchased a store in Williamsburg, Missouri, which has been operating continuously in its current location since 1926. Crane’s gradually grew from a general store serving residents and drivers along Highway 40 to what is now a national tourist attraction, highlighted by the Missouri Department of Tourism as one of the country’s few remaining real country stores, selling everything from firearms to their famous one meat, one cheese, two-dollar sandwiches (selling over 35,000 of them in 2019 alone). In 2004, the Crane family opened a diner and 4,000 square foot museum. Crane’s Country Store and Museum receive over 60,000 visits a year.
Further to the west, the economic impact of the Boonslick Trail developed more slowly in what is now Kingdom City. The town of McCredie was located along the original Boonslick Trail in the late 1800’s. When the St. Charles Road became Highway 40, it passed slightly to the south of the town. When the state later planned for the construction of Highway 54 (along the State Road from Fulton to Jefferson City), the residents of McCredie lobbied so vigorously for the intersection of these roads to be near their town that they paraded through Fulton with banners that said “54-40 or Fight.” McCredie won the fight when the intersection was constructed just south of their town. When Interstate 70 was laid out in the 1960’s just further south, the area from McCredie to this new intersection was incorporated as the town of Kingdom City.
At that time, one of Callaway County’s other commercial landmarks was founded. In 1965, Skelly Oil Company hired John and Lottie Gasper to manage their truck stop, one of only 3 businesses at the time around the new interchange. Two years later, they purchased the business and Gaspers began serving truck drivers and thousands of travelers on I 70 and Highway 54. The restaurant was open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and served Lottie’s soon-to-be-famous chicken fried in cast iron skillets. For decades, lines would stretch out the doors and around the building on Sundays, and some days Gaspers sold more fried chicken than any other spot in the United States. Competition and a change of eating habits to fast-food eventually led the restaurant to close, but Kingdom City still sees over 50,000 travelers a day—following a path laid out centuries before by the Boone family at the point where glaciers met the Ozark Plateau millions of years ago.
Now, as Callaway County enters its third century, its economy and communities continue to reflect the land’s unique history in countless ways. From a fur-trading post on the very edge of the United States to one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants, Callaway has seen enormous changes in just that last 200 years. But if rural culture is an expression of the immediacy between people and place, it is only appropriate that we recognize that our history was not just created by the actions of people over hundreds of years, but also the actions of this place over millions. How we live and work in Callaway County is truly a long story.