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Steelville, Missouri
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By
Peter De Jonge
Photographs by
William Albert Allard
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Heart of the country, this Ozarks town gets by on what the creeks and woods offer. It’s enough.
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Read or print the full article.
In Steelville, a hardscrabble town of 1,429 about 80 miles (129 kilometers) southwest of St. Louis, there has never been a clear line between recreation and nutrition. With spare rolling hills and vistas just big enough to take them in, this portion of the Ozarks foothills seems to have been created to fit the scale of the human eye, but the land isn’t good for growing anything but trees. The homesteaders who arrived in the 1830s counted on deer, turkeys, and squirrels to augment their minuscule harvests of beans, taters, and corn, and with more than half the current households taking in less than $15,000 a year, a lot of Steelvillians still do.
Steelville was once the demographic center of the United States (the 2000 census has moved that spot west to Edgar Springs), but the challenges of this beautiful, unbountiful terrain have given the town a character well outside the mainstream. America’s culture is about getting rich. Steelville’s is about getting by. It’s one of the few places left in the continental United States where living on little more than skill and resourcefulness is not a disgrace but a point of pride.
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| In More to Explore the National Geographic magazine team shares some of its best sources and other information. Special thanks to the Research Division. |
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Early settler and town namesake James Steel sold the land on which Steelville now sits to the county court in the mid-1830s. More specifically, the land Steel owned and sold was in the area of today’s Main Street—and the settlement expanded outward from there. Steelville grew as a political center aided by an 1830s to 1870s iron-mining boom and, in about 1872, the arrival of the St. Louis, Salem, and Little Rock Railroad.
—P. Davida Kales
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Steelville Chamber of Commerce
www.misn.com/Steelville/
This is a good site for learning more about the town of Steelville, its businesses, and its attractions, such as canoeing, rafting, and camping.
Centers of Population Computation, U.S. Census Bureau
www.census.gov/geo/www/centers_pop.pdf
Read the Census Bureau’s explanation of the method used to determine the demographic center of United States population, and check out the list of past centers of population dating back to 1790.
Meramec Music Theatre
www.misn.com/MMT/
Located in historic Steelville, this theater features “the best in country, gospel, the golden oldies, bluegrass music, and comedy.” Visit this site for the show schedule as well as links to other attractions in Steelville.
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Whipple, Dan. “National Geographic’s Driving Guides to America: The Heartland,” National Geographic Books, 1997.
Barnard, Charles N. “Goin’ to Kansas City,” National Geographic Traveler (September/October 1996), 56-72.
Martin, Paul. “Rhineland on the Missouri,” National Geographic Traveler (Autumn 1996), 103-109.
White, Mel. “Songs of the Ozarks,” National Geographic Traveler (July/August 1994), 85-95.
Kostyal, K.M. “St. Louis Spirit,” National Geographic Traveler (September/October 1992), 36-49.
Gibbons, Boyd. “The Plant Hunters: A Portrait of the Missouri Botanical Garden,” National Geographic (August 1990), 124-140.
Smith, Griffin, Jr. “Small Town America: An Endangered Species?” National Geographic (February 1989), 186-215.
Richards, Bill. “Down a Lazy River: Canoeing the Upper Missouri,” National Geographic Traveler (Summer 1985), 130-139.
“The Heartland,” National Geographic Videos, 1983.
Arden, Harvey. “America’s Little Mainstream,” National Geographic (March 1977), 344-359.
Dale, Bruce. “An Ozark Family Carves a Living and a Way of Life,” National Geographic (July 1975), 124-133.
Edwards, Mike W. “Through Ozark Hills and Hollows,” National Geographic (November 1970), 656-689.
Everhart, William C. “So Long, St. Louis, We’re Heading West,” National Geographic (November 1965), 642-669.
Simpich, Frederick. “These Missourians,” National Geographic (March 1946), 277-310.
Simpich, Frederick. “Missouri, Mother of the West,” National Geographic (April 1923), 421-460.
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