County of Marker: Clark County
Location of marker: N. Jackson St. (MO-81), courthouse lawn, Kahoka
Marker Erected by: State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission
Date Marker Erected: 1953
Marker Text:
CLARK COUNTY
Missouri's first northern border county, organized in 1836, is named for explorer William Clark. In 1839, Iowa Territory and the State of Missouri mobilized troops on the nearby border in a boundary dispute called the Honey War for the bee trees in the area. Compromise averted hostilities. In 1851, the Supreme Court finally set the Missouri-Iowa boundary at the old 1824 Iowa, Sauk [Sac] and Fox Indian Purchase Line.
Clark County is distinguished as the site of the Battle of Athens, Aug. 5, 1861, one of two northernmost Civil War Skirmishes. (The other was at Salineville, Ohio, July 26, 1863). At Athens, about 500 Union troops under Col. David Moore routed some 800 pro-Southern guards under Col. M.E. Green to save Iowa from Civil War action.
The famed Anti-Horse Thief Association was first organized by David McKee at Luray, to the west, 1854, to curb frontier banditry by capture and legal prosecution of criminals. Revived in 1863, the society had over 40,000 members in 11 states by the early 1900's. In 1926, the word "Horse" was dropped from the name.
Clark County, with its rolling hills, dense woodland, and rich prairies, lies in a glacial plains region. Near here, at the mouth of the Des Moines, the Mississippi begins its measure of Missouri's eastern boundary.
The first settlers, largely Southerners, located St. Francisville on the Des Moines, 1829. Near here, in the Black Hawk War, 1832, Missouri's troops built Fort Pike when it was feared that the Iowa, Sauk, and Fox Indians might invade this land once theirs.
Kahoka, seat of Clark County since 1872, was laid out in 1856 and named for the Cahokia Indians. Earlier county seats were Waterloo and Alexandria. Near the mouth of the Des Moines, Alexandria once rivaled St. Louis as a pork packing center. In 1870, the peak year, 42,557 hogs were processed.
Among Clark County sites of interest are a monument at Kahoka to David McKee, Anti-Horse Thief Association founder, and, on the Des Moines, Athens, which still has the marks of its famed Civil War battle.1 At. St. Patrick, to the south, is the church of the National Shrine of St. Patrick.