Missouri Underground

Early mining operations significantly shaped Missouri’s landscape, economy, and culture. At Missouri Mines State Historic Site in Park Hills, visitors can dig into the fascinating history of this industry’s influence.

Missouri’s earliest exploration and development were fueled by two commercial enterprises. The first of these, the fur trade, is widely known and acknowledged. Many Americans seem to be at least generally familiar with the romantic saga of the traders and their adventures in penetrating the region’s rivers and hills, dealing with the natives, and competing for territory and trading grounds. Less familiar is the story of the other great thrust of European enterprise on the Missouri frontier: mining. The passion to find and retrieve Missouri’s underground wealth, especially lead and iron ore, was every bit as responsible as the fur trade for the region’s exploration, and it was a greater factor in its settlement, beginning with the French in the eighteenth century. 

The story of mining in Missouri rings with courage, innovation, and achievement, as well as with a measure of greed, exploitation, and abuse. We have here an epic tale of a process that fundamentally shaped the state: Missouri was the world’s largest lead producer for a time. This important story needs to be told, and Missouri Mines State Historic Site is dedicated to that mission. 

Federal Mill No. 3 in Flat River (now Park Hills) was built by the Federal Lead Company in 1907, at a time when fifteen different mining companies operated in the so-called “old lead belt” of southeastern Missouri. Surrounded by communities with names like Leadwood, Rivermines, and Leadington, this large industrial complex in St. Francois County processed the rich ores mined in the region. In 1923 the facility was purchased by the St. Joseph Lead Company, which had been active in the area since 1864, and it grew to become a major lead-concentrating complex with more than thirty significant buildings and structures and large equipment spread over twenty-five acres. It was the largest plant of its type in the world, the hub of an enterprise with one thousand miles of multilevel mine tunnels and three hundred miles of underground mainline railroad track connecting the various shafts and mills. The company bought out all of its competition by 1933 and was the sole employer for thousands of mine workers in the region. 

From its inception, St. Joseph Lead Company has been involved in many aspects of the communities in which it has operated, from water supply and fire control to education, public health, parks, and community celebrations. Its many workers in the lead belt and their families have generally appreciated this engagement—earning the firm a reputation as “the venerable St. Joe,” or in local parlance, “Uncle Joe.” 

Around the middle of the twentieth century after more than two hundred years of productivity, the local veins began to play out, and St. Joe discovered and developed a “new lead belt” some thirty-five miles to the west and south around the tiny hamlet of Viburnum. The functions of the Federal Mill facility dwindled, and in 1972 operations ceased. However, just about the same time, St. Joe’s Viburnum Trend made Missouri the largest lead producer in the world. 

In 1975 the expanded St. Joe Minerals Corporation offered the entire Federal Mill complex, along with over eight thousand acres of land, to the state of Missouri for recreational purposes. For several years, the state wrestled with the problem of how to convert this huge acreage, part of which was covered with the unsightly remains of mining operations, into a public park. With proper facilities and management, much of the acreage offered a range of outdoor recreation possibilities. An obvious focus was on the already established pattern of use by off-road recreational vehicles on the most altered lands, especially the broad expanses of sandy tailings, which are a by-product of ore processing. As plans proceeded to develop the park for these and other uses, the question still remained of what to do with the huge and now derelict industrial facility at the Federal Mill complex on the north end of the property.

Some park professionals and many locals dreamed of a mining museum, and indeed, before St. Joe pulled out, it allowed park staff to select any items they wished to keep for a museum—locomotives and ore cars, diggers, mechanized shovels, and drills. But the mill complex was still a headache—an invitation to vandalism and injury. The many run-down buildings were ugly to some and incredibly expensive either to renovate or remove. Over time, park officials began to appreciate that this industrial complex, with its large number of mining-related buildings, its many gigantic implements of industrial technology, and its location in the heart of one of the most legendary mining regions in the United States, ought to be retained in its entirety and developed to tell the story of mining in Missouri. What had been perceived by some as an awkward liability began to be transformed into an exciting resource and an interpretive opportunity perhaps unrivaled anywhere in the country.

Once this fundamental direction was set, a long process of research and evaluation followed. Park staff discovered that the Federal Mill complex was even richer in potential than they had dreamed. At the same time, making these valuable resources meaningful and accessible to visitors would require a significant investment of funds. The very scale of the artifacts and historic structures rendered the resource extremely difficult to work with. 

Fortunately, enthusiasm for the project swelled within the park system and also among many local community leaders and state legislators. St. Joe and the state mining industry council took an interest, donating funds to assist development. Now, Missouri Mines State Historic Site is on its way to becoming one of the most important interpretive centers for industrial mining technology and architecture in the United States. A tremendous amount of work remains to be done, but the potential has been revealed. And visitors are in for a real treat. 

Driving down the entrance road from Route 32 in Park Hills, one is immediately struck by the immensity of the mill complex sprawling in the valley, with its powerhouse, headframe, crushers, foundry, machine shop, and all the other buildings used for crushing, grinding, and concentrating the ore and for maintaining the widespread operations. Entry for visitors today is through the gatehouse area, just as it was for thousands of mill workers for more than half a century. In the mill yard are the aging buildings and all the apparatus overhead, quiet now, but still showing the signs of former enterprise. In the powerhouse is an extensive museum of Missouri mining geology, history, and equipment. Site staff and, on some occasions, former miners explain things to visiting families, schools, churches, bus tours, and other groups. Plans exist to renovate some of the more significant structures to give a sense of the milling process, and other plans are in place for more historical exhibits. 

The story at Missouri Mines focuses, of course, on the long-enduring boom of the old lead belt that the mill so dramatically portrays. As funds become available, the museum is intended to include the whole story of mineral wealth and its development in the state. It begins with basic geology, which the unparalleled rock and mineral collection in the powerhouse helps to illustrate. Missouri’s underground resources include not only lead and iron, but also copper, silver, barite, zinc, granite, limestone, and coal. Clay, sand, and gravel are also highly important and valuable mineral resources. Human use of these resources began with American Indians, who quarried flint and mined richly hued ores to make paints. 

The French developed the first lead mines in eastern Missouri in the early 1700s, and Anglo-Americans joined with enthusiasm by 1800, using Moses Austin’s technological innovations. He first made his mark— and then went bankrupt—in the Missouri lead region before securing a Spanish charter in 1821 for a colony in Texas. After the Civil War, the rowdy, western-style boomtowns of far-southwest Missouri exploited lead and zinc in the Tri-State District at the junction of Missouri, Oklahoma, and Kansas, but the old lead belt continued to produce as well. 

The mining districts of the state influenced immigration patterns, encouraging people from the mining cultures of Wales and central Europe to settle in Missouri. Newly discovered resources of barite in southeastern Missouri and coal in the northern and western parts of the state began to be exploited. The importance of all this activity was reflected in the establishment of three institutions at Rolla: the Missouri Geological Survey in 1853; the School of Mines in 1870, now known as the Missouri University of Science and Technology; and the US Bureau of Geology and Mines in 1889. Successors of these institutions still remain in Rolla today. 

Missouri Mines has the potential to be one of the best museums of mining and minerals in the country. With its extraordinary physical plant and mineral collections, it already is, in many respects. Mining has been from the beginning an integral part of the state’s heritage, intimately related to its settlement, development, economy, and environment. Missouri Mines State Historic Site tells the exciting story of that epic saga, amid the hulking structures and machinery that were so much a part of it. 

MISSOURI MINES STATE HISTORIC SITE • 4000 STATE HIGHWAY 32, PARK HILLS 

Feature photo courtesy of Oliver Schuchard

Purchase the Missouri State Parks and Historic Site book here.