Springfield, Missouri - American Guide Series on Waymarking.com

My Commentary:

Going from 61,238 when the Guide was posted to 167,601 in the 2020 Census, Springfield is the major Missouri City in Southwest Missouri. It is the home to many colleges, churches, and the famous Springfield Cashew Chicken! Springfield is also a magnet for tourism as it is near lakes and the home of the original Bass Pro Shop.

American Guide Entry

SPRINGFIELD(1,345 alt., 61,238 pop.), Missouri's fourth largest city, is in the southwestern part of the State at the northern edge of the Ozark Highlands. The business district is concentrated around the Public Square, which lies near the center of the city. Within the square is the “ pie," a slightly raised concrete safety zone approximately 75 feet in diameter, around which traffic moves to the right. Just north of the square is the new Civic Center, bounded by Pine Street, Boonville Avenue, Scott Street, and Jefferson Avenue, which includes a new Post Office and Federal Building, a Court House, the Social Security Building, and a modern jail . Around Commercial Street, the principal industrial and commercial district extends along a tier of railroad tracks. Here are creameries, furniture and garment factories, cooperages, chicken and egg establishments, and the railroad shops.

In 1930, Springfield's population consisted of 95.5 per cent native born whites (of which 73 per cent are native Missourians), 3 per cent Negroes, and 1.5 per cent foreign-born. The majority of the laboring class live in one-story frame cottages in the vicinity of the shops and factories. Many businessmen and professional men reside on the eastern side of the city, an area characterized by one- and two-story white frame houses fronting on landscaped lawns and shaded by huge oak, elm, and maple trees. On the southeast, expensive houses of modern design predominate.

The Negroes live north of the midtown railroad tracks, and east of Jefferson Avenue. Their homes for the most part are either the large dilapidated frame houses of an earlier day or modern cottages. Most of the men work for the railroad.

The first attempt to establish a permanent settlement in the Springfield area was made by Thomas Patterson, who brought his family up the James River in 1821 and purchased the claim of the John P . Pettijohn family. When 500 Delaware Indians arrived the next year, asserting that the government had given them southwestern Missouri for a reservation, one of the white settlers was sent to St. Louis to ascertain which claim was correct. The Indians were upheld, and a Delaware and a Kickapoo village are said to have been built on or near the present site of Springfield. Subsequently, all the white settlers abandoned the area except James Wilson, who moved in with the Indians, marrying first one then another of the Indian women. When the Delaware left the locality, he sent his third Indian wife with them, and returned to St. Louis, where he married a white woman, and purchased farm implements. He then returned to develop a farm on the creek which now bears his name.

In 1830 the Government began moving all Indian tribes westward, and a rather slow migration of white families into the region began. Meanwhile, John Polk Campbell and his brother, Madison, had left Tennessee to search for a neighbor's runaway son and to verify reports of the Ozark country. Finding the boy near Fayetteville, Arkansas, they came northward to the site of Springfield, then known as Kickapoo Prairie, and staked claims by cutting a blaze and their names on a tree near a spring approximately 400 yards northeast of the present Public Square. When Campbell and his brother-in-law, Joseph Miller, returned with their families in February 1830, they found the William Fulbright family and A. J. Burnett on the land. Burnett's cabin was near the spring on Campbell's claim, but he yielded possession when the Campbells showed their names and marks on the tree. The site was well chosen, since the spring was excellent, and important early trails were near by. Within a few months a settlement grew up.

In 1833, Greene County was organized, Campbell was made county clerk, and the county seat established in his 12-by-14-foot log cabin. Two years later, Campbell and his wife deeded 50 acres between what are now Jefferson and Campbell Avenues and Pershing and Mill Streets to the county for a townsite. The sale of lots provided funds to erect a courthouse on the Square, which Campbell had platted with the streets converging in the center, in conformity with one he had seen in Tennessee. This unorthodox plan aroused comment, which Campbell dismissed by asserting: "Well, that's the way they made 'em where I cam from."

Traditions vary as to the origin of the town's name. One account relates that Springfield was named for the former home of one of the early settlers. Another states that Campbell chose this name because there was a field on the hill, and a spring under it. The town was incorporated in 1838, and reincorporated in 1846, a year prior to receiving its charter.

Since southwestern Missouri was too much isolated by surrounding hills to develop along with the rest of the State, Springfield grew slowly. It was, however, strategically located at the intersection of the region's two most important roads, so that when heavy migration did begin, expansion was rapid. The majority of the settlers who began coming in 1850 were stockbreeders looking for good grazing and grain producing lands. By 1859, Springfield, with a population of 2,500, controlled the trade of the area. The Government land office for that quarter of the State had been established there in 1835, and the town was a depot for the Butterfield Stage Line.

When the Civil War began, Springfield's population was predominantly in favor of the South. The town's key location and commercial prosperity made it a military objective for both the Union and Confederate armies throughout the war. In the Battle of Wilson's Creek, which was fought 11 miles south of town on August 10, 1861, General Nathaniel Lyon was killed, and the Southern army won a costly victory of doubtful military value. The Confederates subsequently held Springfield until they were driven out in February 1862 by the Union forces, which retained possession, despite numerous counterattacks, until the end of the war.

Charles Butler Hickok, better known as Wild Bill, served at the Union headquarters in Springfield as scout and spy. After the war he remained here. He struck up a friendship with Dave Tutt, a former Confederate soldier and a professional gambler, but after a time the two quarrelled. On July 21, 1865, they met on the Square, and Wild Bill shot Tutt through the heart at a distance of 75 yards. He was tried, defended by John S. Phelps, later governor of Missouri (1876-80), and acquitted. The following year he was appointed deputy United States Marshal at Fort Riley, Kansas. In 1876 he was shot and killed by Jack McCall at Deadwood, South Dakota.

In 1870, when Springfield had grown to a town of 5,555 people, a bitter fight developed over the extension of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad (now a part of the Frisco system) to within a short distance of the city. Springfield wanted the railroad to pass through the town, but when the line was laid out it followed the high divide between the Missouri and White River basins, and consequently missed the Square by one-and-a-half miles. A group of land speculators, United States Congressman Sempronius H. Boyd, Charles E. Harwood, and John W. Lisenby, were quick to seize the possibility for new profit. They persuaded Dr. Edwin T. Robberson, who owned the land north of town through which the railroad would pass, to sell them a controlling interest, so that they might plat a new town. Springfield citizens immediately retaliated by organizing a company to compel the railroad to come through the town. Delegations were sent to St. Louis and to the Boston offices of the railroad. The speculators promised the railroad a 40-acre tract for shops, a 200-foot strip for yards, and 200 acres for a townsite, a half interest in which would go to the railroad company, if the line followed the original survey. Several railroad officials, including Andrew Pierce, later president of the company, came to Springfield, and a general meeting was held. Pierce offered to bring the railroad through the town in exchange for a $25,000 bonus and a depot on Central Street. The majority of the citizens objected. General C. B. Holland informed Pierce that since the charter called for a railroad to Springfield, “not to a patch of black jack brush more than a mile away," the town would not pay the railroad a cent. Pierce then jumped up, pounded on the table, and shouted, “I'll very soon show you where I'll build ! ...". Immediately afterward the Ozark Land Company was organized, with Pierce as president, and the new town was deeded to this company. Springfield had lost the fight.

For a time, the swift rise of North Springfield alarmed the residents of the older town, but the benefits of the railroad soon overflowed to the original city, increasing both its population and its commerce. Drury College was founded “between the towns” in 1873, and shortly there after, a post office was established in the same neighborhood. In 1881, when the Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Memphis Railroad (later also a part of the Frisco system) was completed, additional shops were established in North Springfield, but trackage was laid through the older town. Gradually, the two expanding communities met; in 1887 they were consolidated.

Aided by the railroads, Springfield's industries flourished and the population quadrupled. The development of fruit and vegetable production on the fertile limestone soils of the surrounding plateau, and the establishment of the Southwest Missouri State Teachers College in 1905, gave Springfield a second impetus for growth. Between 1900 and 1910 the population increased more than 50 per cent.

One-fifth of Springfield's present ( 1941 ) working population is employed by railroads. Dairying and poultry raising have been added to the agricultural pursuits of the region, and the Missouri Farmer's Association has established three of the largest co-operative plants in the United States: the Producer's Produce Company, which processes poultry products, the Producer's Creamery Company, and the M.F.A. Milling Company. Two large institutions, the United States Hospital for the Criminal Insane and the Missouri Pythian Home, have been established. The city is the national headquarters of the Assemblies of God, a strong denomination throughout the area. Within the past decade, the Ozark Highlands have been developed as a recreational area. These interests have accentuated Springfield's importance as the center of Ozark business and social life.

Of the $26,000,000 worth of manufactured and processed goods produced by Springfield's industries annually, 77 per cent comes from the farms that lie within a 150-mile radius. Ozark dairy and poultry farms furnish raw materials for Springfield's output of butter, cheese, dressed poultry, and dried eggs. The near-by grain fields and those of contiguous regions south and west supply the city's flour and feed mills, bakeries, and allied industries. Oak, hickory, maple, elm, walnut, and a small amount of pine cut on Ozark farms supply the raw materials used by Springfield furniture factories, cooperages, planing mills, and wagon factory. The stockyards of the city receive the "truck-in" shipments of the hill farmers and pass them on to larger markets; the small packing plants just east of the city redistribute some of the cattle as meat and meat products. The southwestern Ozark farmer habitually eats biscuits and white bread made of Springfield flour, and fattens his stock on Springfield feed. He usually wears Springfield overalls, uses Springfield-made harness, and hauls his produce in Springfield wagons and trailers.

- Missouri, a guide to the "Show Me" state, 1941, pgs. 330-333

The City Hall:

The United States Customhouse and Post Office, now the City Hall, in Springfield, Missouri is a three story building with basement and attic which is L, shaped in plan and constructed of limestone blocks. It is a substantial example of the Romanesque Revival style of design in its variation known as Richardsonian Romanesque after its major proponent in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Henry Hobson Richardson. It is constructed In four sections - the main wing to the south with its turret and campanile-like tower, the central portion, the original northernmost section, and today's northernmost section which forms the L of the plan and is the result of an addition to the building in 1910-1914.

- National Register Application

Book: Missouri Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 330-333 Year Originally Published: 1941

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