Doniphan

Doniphan, founded in 1847 on the hills above the Current River, became the seat of Ripley County in 1860 after George Lee gave 50 acres for the town and named it for Mexican War Col. Alexander W. Doniphan. Ripley County, organized in 1833 and named for War of 1812 Gen. E.W. Ripley, had first used Van Buren as its county seat until that area was detached to form Carter County in 1859. In northwestern Ripley County and adjoining counties, the Irish wilderness became the site of a Catholic colony founded in 1858 by Father John Hogan, and by 1859 forty families had settled there and built a chapel near Pine, but the colony disappeared during the Civil War. During that war, guerrilla bands overran the county, and in Sept., 1864, Union troops burned Doniphan as Confederate Gen. Sterling Price's army moved into Ripley County from Arkansas. After the war, Doniphan recovered with the arrival of a branch of the Missouri Pacific R.R. in 1883 and the growth of the lumber industry. In Missouri's Ozarks, the county drew Southern pioneers in the early 1800's because of its game, waterways, and fertile bottom land, and Lemuel Kittrell became Doniphan's first permanent settler in 1819. In the early 1900's, Doniphan stood at the center of a major railroad tie producing area in the U.S., and at its peak the Missouri Tie and Lumber Co. cut about 35,000,000 feet of logs a year in northwest Ripley County. After 1905 the cutover land was neglected until it became part of Clark National Forest in the 1930's and was placed under reforestation. The county also preserves deeper histories: prehistoric Indian mounds have been found there, the area was used in modern times by the Osage and by migrating Cherokee and other tribes whose village-camps stood along the Current, the Osage ceded claims to the region in 1808, and the Natchitoches Path crossed southeastern Ripley County and the Current River at Pitman's Ferry, Arkansas, about 12 miles south of Doniphan.

Doniphan, Missouri · United States