Stringtown Road was one of Missouri's first trans-link roads and was typical of frontier wagon roads in the early 1800's that linked one small community to another. Around 1824, this stretch of road formed the link between Ste. Genevieve and Springfield, Mo., and Maramec Spring was a welcome campsite to both indians and white travelers. After 1826, the road was named Stringtown because a line of houses stood along either side of it in a straight line from the Maramec mine pit to the Maramec Iron Works, and these dwellings housed iron workers. Thousands of tons of iron ore were hauled over this road to the Maramec furnace. Without it, the crossroads town of Big Prairie, Scioto, and Jamestown, eventually known as St. James, would never have existed at what are now Highway 68 and Interstate 44. Stringtown Road provided a shortcut to the southwest and eventually to the present town of St. James, served the Maramec Spring area for more than one hundred years, and is still in use.