The Jefferson City area grew through the intertwined histories of Cedar City, Missouri’s capital, and Callaway County’s farm country. Hibernia appeared in post office records in 1825, and after David Kenney laid out a new town in 1872 he renamed it Cedar City for nearby Cedar Creek and Cedar Island. Steamboats, stagecoaches, railroads, a school, a school for African-American children, a bridge, an electric trolley, and freight facilities for livestock and grain made Cedar City prosperous, but repeated flooding, especially in 1973 and 1993, led to stricter building standards and decline, leaving only four homes after the area became part of Jefferson City. Jefferson City became Missouri’s capital in 1826 after lawmakers required a centrally located site on the Missouri River, and its riverfront landing quickly developed into a commercial and transportation center. During the Civil War, Governor Claiborne Jackson’s effort to take Missouri into the Confederacy failed when Union forces under General Nathaniel Lyon occupied the city in 1861, and federal control held despite Sterling Price’s 1864 attempt to capture it. Missouri’s Capitol evolved from a first small statehouse to a second building occupied in 1840 after the original was outgrown and then destroyed by fire, and then to a larger third Capitol after lightning burned the second one in 1911; despite renewed efforts to move the capital, Jefferson City remained the seat of government, and the new Capitol was occupied in 1918 and dedicated in 1924, with surplus tax funds used to fill it with notable art. North of the river, Callaway County’s agricultural heritage was shaped by self-sufficient rural life, vividly illustrated in 1936 when severe drought ruined crops and dried grass during the Great Depression, yet the Dungan family endured by hauling straw from Illinois, relying on spring water, livestock, homegrown food, wood stoves, kerosene lamps, and hard daily labor.