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Lebanon,
Missouri
has long been home to an oft traveled trail along the edge of the
Ozarks, beginning when the Wyota and
Osage Indians roamed the area. During the
Civil War, the
trail became known as the "Wire Road”
because of the telegraph lines installed along it between
St. Louis
and
Springfield. Then, in the late 1920s,
Route 66
was born and roughly followed the same path the Indians had marked.
Today the "trail" is called I-44.
The first white settler in the area was a man named
Jesse Ballew in 1820, who built a log cabin on the east side of the
Gasconade River. When Laclede County was formed in 1849, the
settlement of Wyota, named for the area Indians, became the county
seat. Later a highly respected
minister requested the name be changed to Lebanon,
after his hometown of Lebanon,
Tennessee. Soon, a courthouse was
erected on the town square of the newly formed county seat. Early settlers were mostly hunters and farmers from
Tennessee, but
word soon spread about the region, its rich farmland, plentiful game,
rivers and springs, and people from the east began to migrate to the
new settlement.
In the 1850s
The Academy was built, which offered higher education to the area’s
students and soon became the center of the town’s cultural activity.
 By
the time the
Civil War
began,
Lebanon
remained a small secluded settlement. Though
Missouri
declared itself as a neutral state, its population was primarily from
the South and therefore sympathized with the
Confederate forces.
During this time,
Lebanon
saw division among its people, even among families. In the 1860
election, Abraham Lincoln had received only one vote. The
Lebanon
people obviously did not consider themselves "neutral.” The town
was occupied by troops for the entire length of the war. Except
for six months in late 1861 when the
Confederates were in control, the
occupation was by
Union troops. When the war ended, the town
worked together to rebuild the community and officially incorporated
in 1867.
When the railroad began its expansion west, the short
sighted town of
Lebanon refused to
provide land for a railroad depot. As a result, the railroad tracks
were built one mile away from the existing settlement. Later the
commercial area of the town moved closer to the railroad, and the original
site became known as Old Town. Eventually, even the old town square
disappeared.
In 1882, the
Lebanon
Opera House opened and along with other buildings in town, helped to
establish the town as a popular place to gather for meetings. Then a
discovery was made in 1889 that helped to attract even more visitors to
Lebanon. When water well was dug for the community, they discovered that the water
had magnetic properties. The locals began to drink and bathe in the
water, believing that it had healing properties. |
Book your
lodging in Lebanon
HERE!
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Route
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