Arcadia Valley lies in the geologic center of the Ozarks, among the highest peaks of the Missouri Ozarks, and its towns grew in an iron mining boom in the 1840s and 1850s when Pilot Knob and nearby Iron Mountain were thought to be solid iron. Union forces occupied the area early in the Civil War to protect the Iron Mountain Railroad, completed between here and St. Louis in 1858, and General U.S. Grant had his first command post after receiving his commission as a general here from August 8 to 18, 1861. Fort Davidson, an earthen redoubt built in 1863 and named for General J.W. Davidson, was defended at Pilot Knob on September 27, 1864, by more than 1,000 Federals under General Thomas Ewing against about 12,000 Confederates under General Sterling Price; Price lost more than 1,200 men to Ewing's about 200, and his drive to St. Louis was halted. The valley's earlier and later history includes Ephraim Stout's settlement about 1807, Missouri's first working iron furnace on Stout's Creek about 1815, Ironton's laying out as Iron County's seat in 1857, Arcadia's laying out and the opening of Methodist Episcopal Arcadia High School in 1849, the later Ursuline Academy in 1877, the founding of Pilot Knob after the railroad arrived in 1858, Graniteville's founding with a large quarry in 1869, and nearby natural sites including Taum Sauk, Evangeline Falls, Royal Gorge, Elephant Rocks, and other features of the Ozarks.
