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Post-war economic recovery was spurred by the timber boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as a number of businesses sought to make large profits from the vast virgin pine forests that still blanketed the county. The boom began in the late 1880s, when the Missouri Lumber and Mining Company extended a branch of the St. Louis-San Francisco ("Frisco") Railway to the new town of Grandin in the far south. Massive sawmills in and around Grandin produced, at their peak, some 60 to 70 million board feet of lumber every year, from trees felled in Carter and neighboring counties. In 1917, meanwhile, even as the timber boom was passing its peak, the Mid-Continent Iron Company provided another economic boost, opening a smelter on land north of Fremont to process iron ore shipped from [[Michigan]]. A large town called Midco sprang up on the site, with a population as high as 3,000 at one point, finding work in the smelter as well as in a short-lived chemical plant to supply the U.S. Army during [[World War I]]. These enterprises made Carter County an economic hub for a time, and many flocked to the area for employment; it hit an all-time population high of 7,482 in the 1920 census.<ref>Dr. Gene Oakley, "A History of Carter County, Sesquicentennial Edition" (2007), p. 128-136.</ref>
Post-war economic recovery was spurred by the timber boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as a number of businesses sought to make large profits from the vast virgin pine forests that still blanketed the county. The boom began in the late 1880s, when the Missouri Lumber and Mining Company extended a branch of the St. Louis-San Francisco ("Frisco") Railway to the new town of Grandin in the far south. Massive sawmills in and around Grandin produced, at their peak, some 60 to 70 million board feet of lumber every year, from trees felled in Carter and neighboring counties. In 1917, meanwhile, even as the timber boom was passing its peak, the Mid-Continent Iron Company provided another economic boost, opening a smelter on land north of Fremont to process iron ore shipped from [[Michigan]]. A large town called Midco sprang up on the site, with a population as high as 3,000 at one point, finding work in the smelter as well as in a short-lived chemical plant to supply the U.S. Army during [[World War I]]. These enterprises made Carter County an economic hub for a time, and many flocked to the area for employment; it hit an all-time population high of 7,482 in the 1920 census.<ref>Dr. Gene Oakley, "A History of Carter County, Sesquicentennial Edition" (2007), p. 128-136.</ref>
The county's boom years ended around 1920. The virgin timber had already been cut, and most of the sawmills had closed or relocated; and Mid-Continent Iron ceased its operations in 1921, with the community of Midco drying up and already a ghost town by the 1930s. In ensuing years, residents struggled to make a living, as the denuded land was of poor use for agriculture, and there was little wildlife remaining. The population steadily declined from its peak, hitting a low of 3,878 in 1970. However, outdoor tourism gradually succeeded in reversing the county's fortunes. The creation of federal and state parks, including Big Spring State Park and the Mark Twain National Forest, stimulated efforts to preserve and revive the local ecology, and improved conservation programs led to the regrowth of the forests. The inclusion of the Current River within the Ozark National Scenic Riverways in 1972 sparked interest in the river's potential for recreation, and Van Buren especially became a center for canoeing, swimming, and camping. Since the 1970s, Carter County has steadily risen in both population and economic prosperity.<ref>https://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/ozarkswatch/ow601h.htm</ref>
==References==
==References==