History
The Old Lead Belt
Organized in 1821, St. Francois County sat on top of one of the richest lead deposits in the world. For 108 years its mines, mills, and company towns shaped everything here. This is that story, and what came after.
Lead in the ground
From “La Bonne Terre” to St. Joe Lead
French miners were working lead in this part of Missouri by 1720, after Philip François Renault sailed from France with some 200 miners. Surface miners called the ground around present-day Bonne Terre “La Bonne Terre,” the good soil, for its lead. The serious work began in 1864, when the St. Joseph Lead Company opened its mine at Bonne Terre, starting underground mining there in 1869.
Over the following decades St. Joe bought out nearly every competitor, including the Doe Run Lead Company in 1917 and the Federal Lead Company in 1923, and the mines followed the ore southeast toward Flat River. The district that grew up around them, the Old Lead Belt, produced more than 8.5 million tons of lead. The Bonne Terre mine closed in 1962, and in 1972 the last Old Lead Belt mine, at Flat River, shut down, ending 108 years of lead mining in the county.
Mining didn’t leave Missouri: St. Joe had already found a new ore body near Viburnum, west of here, in 1955, and that “New Lead Belt” still supplies most of the country’s primary lead. But in St. Francois County, the mines, mills, and company towns became history.
Founding and early years
From Murphy’s Settlement to Farmington
St. Francois County was organized on December 19, 1821, from parts of Jefferson, Ste. Genevieve, and Washington counties, and named for the St. Francis River. Its county seat grew out of a frontier settlement founded by the Murphy family of Kentucky, which donated the land for the courthouse and gave the town its first name.
After the mines
Parks, a new city, and a long cleanup
When the mines closed, the company gave much of the land back to the public. In 1975 the St. Joe company donated its mill complex and surrounding land to the state, which opened St. Joe State Park in 1976, with the old Federal Mill No. 3 preserved as the Missouri Mines State Historic Site. The flooded Bonne Terre mine became a scuba diving attraction and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
The mining towns reorganized too. In January 1994, Flat River, Elvins, Esther, and Rivermines merged into the new city of Park Hills, an unusual four-way merger. The mines also left a harder legacy: the Bonne Terre mine tailings became a Superfund site in 1992, cleanup was still going on in 2022, and the state still advises against eating fish from the Big River because of lead.
Keeping the history
See it for yourself
The best places to dig deeper are in the county itself: the old county jail in Farmington, now a museum, and the Missouri Mines State Historic Site in Park Hills, where the mill that processed the Old Lead Belt’s ore still stands.
For the mining story, visit the Missouri Mines State Historic Site in Park Hills. For family history, the St. Francois County MOGenWeb site collects records, town histories, and mining history.
Visit the museum
St. Francois County Jail Museum
Built in 1870 and used as the county jail until the early 1990s, the old jail and sheriff’s residence now hold artifacts from the Farmington area, with exhibits on the town’s founders and notable residents.
- Address
- 11 N Franklin Street, Farmington, MO 63640
- Phone
- (573) 756-1701
- Hours
- Monday–Friday, 8:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m.Closed weekends and holidays. Ring the doorbell at the front entrance.
Verify before relying on this. Compiled from Wikipedia’s articles on the county, its towns, and the Southeast Missouri Lead District; the St. Francois County MOGenWeb site; the National Park Service; and the City of Farmington. Dates and figures vary between sources; for the full story, visit the museums above.
