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The land on which the community of Ellsinore would develop passed through several hands during the 19th century and was mostly used for farmland. In 1888, the then-owner, Charles Hearin, sold a right-of-way to the Cape Girardeau and Southwestern Railroad, a new local rail line being constructed to harvest timber from the virgin pine forests of Carter County and neighboring areas; immediately after this, Hearin began laying out a town along the railroad. A store was opened that same year, followed by a post office in 1889. The origin of the name "Ellsinore" is not certain, but the most common and plausible story is that the railroad's engineer, Major Brooks, named it for Elsinore Castle in [[Denmark]], the setting of [[Shakespeare]]'s [[''Hamlet'']].<ref>https://collections.shsmo.org/manuscripts/columbia/C2366/carter-county</ref>
The land on which the community of Ellsinore would develop passed through several hands during the 19th century and was mostly used for farmland. In 1888, the then-owner, Charles Hearin, sold a right-of-way to the Cape Girardeau and Southwestern Railroad, a new local rail line being constructed to harvest timber from the virgin pine forests of Carter County and neighboring areas; immediately after this, Hearin began laying out a town along the railroad. A store was opened that same year, followed by a post office in 1889. The origin of the name "Ellsinore" is not certain, but the most common and plausible story is that the railroad's engineer, Major Brooks, named it for Elsinore Castle in [[Denmark]], the setting of [[Shakespeare]]'s [[''Hamlet'']].<ref>https://collections.shsmo.org/manuscripts/columbia/C2366/carter-county</ref>
Owing to the lumber operations in the area, Ellsinore grew rapidly. In 1910 it was the largest town in the county with a population of 813, and boasted many prominent businesses, including several sawmills, a hotel, and a bank, and a high school was established in 1913.<ref>Robert Sidney Douglass, ''History of Southeast Missouri'' (1912), p. 373.</ref> By the 1920s, however, most of the forests had been cut, and the economy went into a sharp decline. By 1930, Ellsinore's population had dropped to only 238, with a very slow recovery following. A number of historic buildings from the early 20th century are still standing, and the creation of a new school district for the Ellsinore area in the 1960s has provided a new anchor for community life.<ref>Dr. Gene Oakley, "A History of Carter County, Sesquicentennial Edition" (2007), p. 83-92.</ref>
==References==
==References==