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The first notable residents in the Steelville area were William Britton, a local gristmill operator, and James Steel, owner of a trading post and the namesake of the future town (its name has nothing to do with the production of [[steel]]). Despite being centrally located in the new Crawford County after its formation in 1829, the site might not have become the county seat, except that the commissioners initially chosen to establish the seat neglected to do so, and it was not until 1835 that a new commission took the task seriously.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_RfAuAAAAYAAJ/page/n49/mode/2up How Missouri Counties, Towns and Streams Were Named (1916)]</ref> Steel, briefly a member of the commission, sold 40 acres of land he owned near the store for the laying out of a town, which was promptly named in his honor.<ref>https://collections.shsmo.org/manuscripts/columbia/C2366/crawford-county</ref>
The first notable residents in the Steelville area were William Britton, a local gristmill operator, and James Steel, owner of a trading post and the namesake of the future town (its name has nothing to do with the production of [[steel]]). Despite being centrally located in the new Crawford County after its formation in 1829, the site might not have become the county seat, except that the commissioners initially chosen to establish the seat neglected to do so, and it was not until 1835 that a new commission took the task seriously.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_RfAuAAAAYAAJ/page/n49/mode/2up How Missouri Counties, Towns and Streams Were Named (1916)]</ref> Steel, briefly a member of the commission, sold 40 acres of land he owned near the store for the laying out of a town, which was promptly named in his honor.<ref>https://collections.shsmo.org/manuscripts/columbia/C2366/crawford-county</ref>
The new town remained small in population for many years, but nonetheless prospered, thanks to its being the seat of county government. Numerous businesses were established in the 1830s and 1840s, along with a local [[Freemasonry|Masonic]] Lodge. However, the fact that it was bypassed to the north by the Pacific Railroad, shortly before the [[Civil War]], meant that it would not see the rapid growth of other nearby communities, and in fact Steelville was not incorporated as a city until 1885.
One dubious claim to fame for the town arose in 1838, when Mary, the slave of a local resident, John Brinker, was executed for the murder of his young daughter, Vienna; though her age is uncertain, she was probably around 14 years old, making her the youngest person ever executed by the state of Missouri.<ref>Frazier, Harriet C. ''Slavery and Crime in Missouri, 1773-1865'' (2001), p. 170.</ref>
Steelville suffered a serious setback in 1898, due to a major flood of the Yadkin Creek that summer, killing 13 locals and inflicting some $200,000 worth of property damage. It was further devastated by a fire that destroyed much of the downtown district in 1904. The community rapidly rebuilt, though, and maintained a slow but steady growth over the ensuing decades, boosted more recently by tourism to the Meramec Valley.<ref>http://steelville.com/about-steelville/</ref>
==Geography==
==Geography==