County of Marker: Maries County
Location of Marker: E. 5th St. & N. Mill St., Old Jail Museum, Vienna
Marker Erected by: State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission
Date Marker Erected: 1961
Marker Text:
MARIES COUNTY
Maries County, in the central Ozarks of Missouri, was organized in 1855 and named for the Big and Little Maries Rivers. The area, in territory ceded by Osage Indians in 1808, was roamed by French trappers who early named the Gasconade, Bourbeuse, and Maries, the county's rivers. Pioneers from the South and other parts of Missouri came in the 1820's, and in the 1850's brought a large German immigration and a number of Irish.
Vienna, the county seat, was laid out on the watershed divide between the Osage and Gasconade in 1855 by Reuben Terrill on 70 acres donated by William Shockley. The town is said to be named Vienna as a compromise resulting from county Judge V.G. Latham's wanting it named "Vie Anna" in memory of a relative. The courthouse, the county's third, was built in 1943.1
In Vienna are the Old Jail and Felker Log House Museums of pioneer relics. The gable-roofed, limestone jail was built in 1858, by a Mr. Barnhart at the cost of $2,500. The Felker Log House, built 1855 by John Felker, native of Hanover, Germany, was moved near the jail in 1959.
Maries County, encompassing 526 square miles of wooded hills, fertile valley, and tableland prairies, lies in a general farming area. In the Civil War, the county saw little action, but Vienna was occupied as a minor Union post. After the was, lead was mined briefly in the 1870's and zinc in the 1880's.
Belle, the county's largest town, grew up along the route of the Chicago, Rock Is., & Pac. R.R., built through a small portion of north Maries County, 1904. Among other communities are High Gate, Safe, Hayden, Brinktown, and Vichy, laid out 1880 near mineral spring, an early noted health spa.
Prehistoric Indian mounds and artifacts have been found along the county's rivers, and an ancient Indian trail in the county later became a road between St. Louis and Springfield. In the 1820's, Shawnee and Delaware Indians had a village at Indian Ford on the Gasconade River. An Indian pictograph of a deer remains on a bluff above the Gasconade near Paydown Spring. The spring, with a measured 11,600,000 gals. daily flow from several gravel beds, is the site of early grist mills and a wooden mill.
Update since 1961 marker erected:
Excavation for the courthouse, built in two stages, began in 1940, and the September 1942 court term was held in the new building.