Laclede, Missouri, established in 1853 with railroad access, became a prosperous town with stores, banks, factories, retail businesses, skilled trades, and manufacturing, and its history includes Civil War defenses, the boyhood home of General John J. Pershing, transportation routes, and preserved historic sites. During the Civil War, the organization of the 18th Regiment Infantry in 1861 and the threat of bushwhacker and supply raids made Laclede a center of military operations, and Fort Morgan, an earthwork south of the railroad tracks near what is now the Methodist Church, protected Union soldiers guarding railroad operations and bridges in Linn County. Near Laclede, John Joseph Pershing was born on September 13, 1860, to John Fletcher Pershing and Anne Elizabeth Thompson, grew up in a family with farms, a lumber yard, and a general store, taught at a small African American school after high school, studied at the State Normal School in Kirksville, entered West Point, and rose through the ranks to become General of the Armies in 1919 after service on the western frontier, in Cuba, the Philippines, Mexico, and Europe in World War One. The area also includes the Locust Creek Covered Bridge, built in 1868 by Bishop and Eaton with the Howe-truss system, later part of State Road Number 8, the White Cross Highway, and the Pikes Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway, and now preserved as one of Missouri's four surviving covered bridges. Laclede lay along the route of the Pikes Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway, organized in 1914 and later called the Pershing Transportation Route in 1919, linking small towns across the country. In 1897, twenty African American soldiers of the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry, known as Buffalo Soldiers, passed by Laclede during a bicycle journey from Missoula, Montana, to St. Louis. Laclede also formed a sister-city connection with Souilly, Meuse, France, in September 2010 because of Pershing's wartime headquarters there during World War One. The community's historic places include Pershing State Park, the General Pershing Boyhood Home Site, and the Locust Creek Covered Bridge Site.