Exeter, Missouri USA - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

When the St. Louis San Francisco Railroad decided to build down to Texas (eventually reaching Paris, TX), it broke off of their main line at Pilgrim Crossing (later renamed Monett), MO and headed down through Barry County. Eventually in 1880, Exeter, named after the big city in England, was platted along the Frisco line. Exeter is the highest town in 6 adjoined counties in southwest Missouri.

Unfortunately for Cassville, which had been platted and established in 1845 for the Barry County seat, there was no railroad connection to Cassville -- originally. In 1896 an independent railroad, the shortest railroad in the US, originally known as the Cassville & Western, was laid down from Exeter to Cassville to give the latter railroad access. Later it was renamed to Cassville & Exeter -- a bit less ostentatious and ambitious; and it continued to serve Cassville until 1956.

With the Barry County Farmer's Coop on the left, somewhere ahead of us was the switch for the historic Shortest Railroad in America, which branched off to the right/east toward Cassville. Satellite views show hints of the old railroad line here and there.

Sources:

• Goodspeed's 1888 History of Barry County; reprinted from History of Newton, Lawrence, Barry and McDonald Counties Missouri (etc.); Barry County portion reprinted by Litho Printers of Cassville, MO in 1975
• MoBarry Rootsweb pages on ancestry.com

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Date Logged Log User Rating   06/05/2016 MountainWoods visited it