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Wayne County, Missouri (view source)
Revision as of 18:13, February 5, 2020
, 18:13, February 5, 2020Added to page
'''Wayne County''' is a county in the southeastern part of the state of [[Missouri]]. It had a population of 13,521 at the 2010 census. The county was organized in 1818 and named for "Mad" [[Anthony Wayne]], a general of the [[American Revolutionary War]]. Greenville is the county seat, and Piedmont is the largest city.
'''Wayne County''' is a county in the southeastern part of the state of [[Missouri]]. It had a population of 13,521 at the 2010 census. The county was organized on December 11, 1818, and named for "Mad" [[Anthony Wayne]], a general of the [[American Revolutionary War]]. Greenville is the county seat, and Piedmont is the largest city.
==History==
The eastern Ozarks were originally inhabited by a series of native civilizations. One of the earliest of these was the Hopewell culture, which constructed a large number of mounds throughout the area, including several hundred in present-day Wayne County. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Osage tribe was dominant, though most of its members had left the region by 1820.
The first permanent white settlement in what is now Wayne County came in about 1802, with several families moving into the area in which the future village of Patterson was founded. Others began settling along the St. Francis River nearby. The population of the Ozarks grew only slowly, though, and it was not until 1818 that the Missouri territorial legislature organized Wayne County from the territory of [[Cape Girardeau County, Missouri|Cape Girardeau]] and Lawrence Counties. At the time of its creation, it extended all the way to Missouri's western border, incorporating a number of future counties, and was sometimes called "the State of Wayne" on account of its great size. The community of Cedar Cabin, on the St. Francis, was chosen for the county seat and renamed "Greenville," with a two-story log cabin built to serve as the courthouse.<ref>Robert Sidney Douglass, ''History of Southeast Missouri'' (1912), p. 167, 176-78.</ref>
The first census, in 1820, showed the county as having a population of 1,443, including 204 black slaves. Its growth remained sluggish until the 1870s, when it enjoyed a boom that lasted into the early 20th century, on account of timber harvesting and the arrival of the railroad, with the first line constructed in 1894. After the lumber industry declined around 1910, however, Wayne County likewise fell into a slump, which persisted for several decades.
The county (especially the Greenville area) also suffered from periodic fires and floods. The courthouse was destroyed by a fire in 1854, as was its replacement in 1892. This last burned most of the county records, so that there are few surviving documents from the 19th century. Moreover, the St. Francis was prone to damaging floods. Greenville was flooded as early as 1826, and repeated floods in the 1920s and '30s were even more devastating. To control such flooding, Lake Wappapello was constructed by the Corps of Engineers, completed in 1941 and filling the river valley in the southern part of the county. A number of homes were permanently submerged as a result, and the town of Greenville was itself moved two miles to the north.<ref>https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/AssetDetail?assetID=b67e42be-1056-4665-ac96-05c384fc1aaf</ref>
The population of Wayne County, after hitting a low of about 8,500 in 1970, thereafter rebounded, thanks in part to tourism and recreation in Lake Wappapello and Sam A. Baker State Park to the north.
==Geography==
==Geography==