Stoddard County, Missouri
Stoddard County is a county in the southeastern part of the state of Missouri. It was named for Amos Stoddard, the first American governor of Upper Louisiana. The population was 29,968 at the 2010 Census. Bloomfield is the county seat, and Dexter is the largest city.
History
American settlement of what became Stoddard County began in the 1820s, mostly in the Crowley's Ridge area of the central and north-central regions, as the lowland swamps to the west and east were mostly uninhabitable. The county was organized, mostly out of New Madrid County, on January 2, 1835. It was initially somewhat larger than today, with its northeastern and southwestern portions being transferred in the mid-1800s to Cape Girardeau County and Dunklin County, respectively.
No major battles took place in Stoddard County during the Civil War, though there were numerous skirmishes in the area, and organized military units passed through on a regular basis. In November 1861, some Union soldiers in possession of Bloomfield used the town's printing press to strike off the first issue of what became the Stars and Stripes newspaper (it would not become a continuous large-scale publication until the 20th century).
Timber clearing in the swamps and the building of the Frisco and St. Louis Southwestern Railroads led to a significant boom in the county's population from the 1870s onward, though it stagnated in the mid-20th century as the mechanization of agriculture reduced the demand for a large labor force.
Geography
Stoddard County lies in southeastern Missouri, at the northern edge of the Bootheel. It is the tenth-largest county in Missouri by land area, with a total of 829 square miles.[1]
The chief geographic feature is Crowley's Ridge, running roughly from northeast to southwest across the county. The ridge's highest point, approximately 580 feet above sea level, is located about three miles southwest of Bell City.[2] The rest of the county consists of much lower-lying flatlands that are part of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain.
Communities
Stoddard County contains eleven incorporated communities: eight cities, two villages, and one census-designated place (CDP).