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At the urging of locals, hoping to profit more directly from the railroad's presence, the legislature separated the region from neighboring counties and organized it as Phelps County in 1857. At the same time, a commission was put to work to select a new county seat near its approximate center. Bishop provided some fifty acres of land for the town, which was laid out in 1858; however, the community of Dillon, a few miles to the east, put forth its own claim to be the county seat, an issue that was not settled until 1861, in favor of the town on Bishop's donated land.<ref>https://collections.shsmo.org/manuscripts/columbia/C2366/phelps-county</ref> There are multiple versions of how the town gained the name of "Rolla." One, more popular locally, is that the disgruntled citizens of Dillon, given the chance to name the community as compensation, named it for a disreputable hunting dog. Another (and generally considered more plausible) is that it was a misspelling of [[Raleigh, North Carolina|Raleigh]], the capital of [[North Carolina]], from which many of the early settlers had come.<ref>https://www.therolladailynews.com/article/20150729/news/150728853</ref>
At the urging of locals, hoping to profit more directly from the railroad's presence, the legislature separated the region from neighboring counties and organized it as Phelps County in 1857. At the same time, a commission was put to work to select a new county seat near its approximate center. Bishop provided some fifty acres of land for the town, which was laid out in 1858; however, the community of Dillon, a few miles to the east, put forth its own claim to be the county seat, an issue that was not settled until 1861, in favor of the town on Bishop's donated land.<ref>https://collections.shsmo.org/manuscripts/columbia/C2366/phelps-county</ref> There are multiple versions of how the town gained the name of "Rolla." One, more popular locally, is that the disgruntled citizens of Dillon, given the chance to name the community as compensation, named it for a disreputable hunting dog. Another (and generally considered more plausible) is that it was a misspelling of [[Raleigh, North Carolina|Raleigh]], the capital of [[North Carolina]], from which many of the early settlers had come.<ref>https://www.therolladailynews.com/article/20150729/news/150728853</ref>
The Pacific Railroad was extended to Rolla shortly after its founding, with the first train rolling into town on December 22, 1860. It was that same year that the first county courthouse was completed and opened for business. However, Rolla's growth was interrupted almost at once by the outbreak of the [[Civil War]]. As a rail terminus providing direct access to St. Louis, it was a valuable strategic point, and although the local population mostly sympathized with the South, it was occupied in the summer of 1861 by [[Union]] forces under General [[Franz Sigel]], which would hold it until the end of the war. Two forts were eventually built to defend it against [[Confederate]] attacks, and the courthouse was used for a time as a military hospital.
After the Civil War, Rolla was able to recover relatively quickly, thanks to the presence of the railroad as well as the opening in 1870 of the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, an engineering college established to take advantage of the extensive mineral deposits of the Ozarks. By 1900, the city had a population of 1,600, and maintained a slow but steady growth during the early 20th century. U.S. Route 66 was constructed along the railroad path in the 1920s, making Rolla an important stopover for auto travelers and accelerating the expansion of retail trade and service businesses in the local economy. Public education was another factor; the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy was incorporated into the state university system as the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1964, and its fame as an engineering institution gave Rolla the status of a college town as well. (It also made the city the site of the state's first functional nuclear reactor, in 1961.)<ref>https://reactor.mst.edu/facts/</ref> In 2008, the college was renamed the Missouri University of Science and Technology.
Today, Rolla has a population of almost 20,000 and is one of the largest and most significant cities in south-central Missouri.
==Geography==
==Geography==