Kelpe was a small hamlet and post office near the intersection of Wild Horse Creek Road and Ossenfort Road, named for an early pioneer family that settled there. In 1852, Henry Kelpe (I) left Hanover, Germany, with his wife and three sons, traveled over six months by way of England to New Orleans, then went up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to this area, where the family purchased 40 acres for $200 and established a farmstead. They raised wheat and corn, sold dried fruit from the many fruit trees on the property, harvested lumber for barrel staves, and made corn whiskey. Henry Kelpe (II) married Caroline Arbegast, had four children, built a home in 1885, continued farming the valley, and served the area as postmaster and blacksmith from 1886 to 1896. Members of this pioneer family are buried in unmarked graves in Babler State Park, and many of their descendants still live in the Wildwood area. An earlier pioneer family, the Bacons of Virginia, had settled there in the early 1800s before rising land values and westward expansion led many of them to sell their properties to German immigrants such as the Kelpes as early as the 1830s; among them were brothers Nathanial, William, Langston, and Ludwell Bacon, and Nathanial Bacon remained in the area that became Kelpe.